After she fends him off, he weaponizes the current culture of workplace sensitivity against her. He corners Quinn in a comatose patient’s room and tries to force a kiss on her. She’s dedicated herself to her work where the good news is that she’s passed her exam to become an official RN, and the bad news is that the alpha doctor (Peter Facinelli) around the hospital has targeted her for sexual harassment. The film centers on Quinn (an indistinct Elizabeth Lail), a nurse on the outs with her father (Matt Letscher) and younger sister (Talitha Bateman) ever since their mother’s death six months before.
The film opens on a house party with a gaggle of teens tapping the free download button for Countdown of their own volition, and two of them command the first 10-odd minutes of screen time, but they’re just misdirection. But a lot of other stuff has been jammed into the film’s blunt, arguably ill-conceived iHorror ad campaign. Dec’s script has two chief preoccupations: embracing death as a natural and inevitable counterbalance to life and the advancement of the #MeToo movement. It’s only superficially about smartphones or apps. But this grabby new urban legend-style horror device still needs a story, and Dec came up with one that addresses more than the usual subtextual softball of What Technology Really Means.