Death Note (2017) Film Review

"Anime's just kids cartoons". The opinion said by many. Some anime series are critically acclaimed for intense; ground breaking stories, characters & mature themes, equivalent to or greater than that of most major TV dramas. Unfortunately, many can't get over the stigma that any animated show (that isn't an adult comedy) is unsuitable for anyone over the age of 12. That's the general mainstream view that gave birth to need for live action adaptations of anime & manga. Take the same story; structure, characters, anything else that made the original material so beloved & put actual humans infront of the camera. You then have an anime-based film or series ready for the masses. All in between their sessions of X-Factor & Made In Chelsea, of course.

Before going into differences between the anime & this new film, I'll explain what Death Note is generally about: teenage boy sees world as rotten with crime, boy finds magic notebook that kills people (by writing their names in) left by a god of death, boy starts killing criminals under the alias Kira, boy now a criminal gets hunted down by quirky detective.

There's so much more as to what makes Death Note as a franchise amazing but that vague description is all that Netflix's new live action film adaptation shares with the anime (& manga) loved by so many. Aside from what feels like a few gems in a compost heap, Netflix's Death Note lacks everything that made the anime so breath taking, making even those who haven't seen the original material express 10 sighs per minute.

*Spoiler warning for plot details, if you dare to put yourself through this film*

Death Nope

Instead of the anime's Light Yagami, we get Light Turner played by Natt Wolff,  who for the entirety of the film looks like he came straight from the set of a Hot Topic advert. He's an angry loner enraged at the state of the crime-ridden world following the death of his mother. Accompanied with a soundtrack featuring ill-fitting 80's soft rock, the angry emo finds the Death Note, followed by his girlish squeal as he spots the God of Death, Ryuk, appearing alongside it. He swears in denial a little bit & begins a string of gruesomely gory killings.

Light Turner & his anime counterpart, Light Yagami

Some of the castings actually work quite well. However, when the lead is so ill-fittingly written & played, the positives are outshone into obscurity. Light is originally written as a charismatic, academically gifted genius. All of the girls want him & all of the lads want to be him. No one could hate him because he acts so likeable & respectable. This is all just a mask he wears infront of those around him. A persona he wears to hide that he's a calculating sociopath who passes judgement on evil & those in his way to paint the world in his image. He acts like a leader whose ideologies make him respectable, & difficult to resist rooting for. In this version, Light is nothing more than a whiny brat. Acting more like a child whose found a gun in the street, this iteration waves the Death Note around & uses it to kill those who've pissed him off instead. This is emphasized by Natt Wolff's forgettable skills as an actor which could only be described as trying to be bipolar. If not being as monotone as a porn star's first time behind a camera, every other scene has him burst with over-the top anger with no other emotion in-between. Seeing Natt Wolff's face portraying Light makes you more want to push him out of a window, much less root for him. It's as if this is the second coming of Hayden Christensen.

Director Adam Wingard's signature style is evident here. Being well known for his work on horrors and/or thrillers (The Guest, Blair Witch), Wingard's skill in creating eerie aesthetics highlight the little intensity & suspense that lies dormant in the lacklustre & choppy screenplay. The highest praise that should be given to Wingard is for casting Willem Dafoe as the God of Death, Ryuk. Basically recapturing his take on The Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films, Dafoe performs brilliantly as the demonic yet sassy, meth head-looking god of death fans love so much. Ryuk steals any scene he's in & is easily the best part of the film, which is saying a lot as he's barely in it.

When the cocaine withdrawls hit you

Ryuk in any scene breath of fresh air but there are too few to distract you from the uneven & dull screenplay. Even attempts at creating a jolting shock factor by shaking up the deaths create an even duller final product. As an alternative to the standard cause of death by the Death Note being a heart attack like in the anime & manga, the film uses a series of overly gory deaths to create a darker sense of wrath that is the user of the magic book. One example being the first murder involving taking off of a school bully's head off with a flying ladder. Instead of the subtlety that came with the original cause of death, the bulk of killings involving blood and guts splattering everywhere take away some of the mystery that is the Kira murderer. With what feels like no weight to it, the way the sequences flow & are shot, the director chose to create an emphasis on gore for the sake of gore. Wingard's disregard for elements of the original source material also branch out to creating his own parody instalment of the Final Destination franchise. The director seems to have altered Death Note into a D-grade horror flick in order for it to fit the theme of his own filmography.

Light's generic girlfriend, Mia

Just 20 minutes after discovering his new godly killing abilities, Light decides the smart thing to do would be to tell some random hot girl (Mia, played by Margaret Qualley) all about it & decides to start a relationship based on a kink for 50 shades of murder. Where Light's anime counterpart views relationships as additional tools for his manipulation & deception, this live action Death Note actually has him take it seriously as the focal point for the film. Most of the murders are brushed over in a couple of montages of genocidal foreplay. Death Note's original unique selling point is lazily skimped over in exchange for a no-chemistry high school romance taken straight out of an MTV drama.



Genocide dates. Yey.

Not everything that doesn't exactly follow the source material is terrible. Specifically, this would be the handling of the character of L, the genius master detective tasked with identifying & catching Kira. Played by Lakeith Stanfield (Straight Outta Compton, Get Out), L is a lot more emotional & irrational than the previous calm & collected versions of the character but that's ok. He's still humorously, quirky, practically inhales sugar & always sits like he's about to do a squat. The changes to the way that his character acts & reacts are different but it fits to the flow of events in the story. If Ryuk is the most entertaining part of this Death Note, L is the most interesting. It's a shame a couple of breaths of fresh air can't put out the film equivalent of a house fire.

Lakeith Stanfield as L

There's nothing wrong with diverging away from the source material but it must be justified. If the changes fit & create their own unique purpose for the format the new iteration is made on, great. If not, it begs the question as to why the idea of reusing already-proven source material is refused & replaced with a series of bad storytelling decisions. The biggest of these would be the utilisation of the chase been L & Light as Kira. Dynamically speaking, this has always been one the most thrilling parts of Death Note as a franchise: an intense game of cat-and-mouse where both continuously commit to outsmarting the other before finally revealing their true intentions. Yet in this version, the chase begins & abruptly ends, all cards being laid on the table about half way through. This is far too early, like a climax reached before any enjoyment can actually be had. For the remainder of the run time, we're stuck we a dull, barely impactful teen drama thriller that keeps making viewers ask themselves how much more their patience can take.

Pop a squat, mate.

Final Thoughts

A long series of failed western adaptations of anime titles teased that Death Note may be no different. In spite of this, it had the best potential so far to work. It's premise & explored themes are so relatable to societal issues going on today: the line between right & wrong, liberty & security, corruption & justice. Merely compressing the exact events & characters from the anime series into a live action film would have guaranteed a winner. Better yet, a full TV series would have gained even higher critical claim, due to Netflix being at the helm, with it's strength being creating & releasing full original series. That & the already-renowned director should have been able to create an adaptation that's not only faithful but also a hit with the masses as the acclaimed, highly intelligent source material practically serves it up on a platter. Sadly, that's not what we got.

Instead of an intellectual, charismatic, sociopath with a god complex, we get a whiny brat who acts like he can't find his eyeliner. Instead of a supernatural detective show, we get a Final Destination parody. Instead of a suspenseful, thrilling game of cat-and-mouse between murderer & detective, we get a romance teen drama with a fetish for gore, as if it was pulled out of the writer's room of 90210 for a Halloween special.

An original bad film is a chore to watch. A bad film that is such due lazily skimping over reliable source material is almost laughable. Netflix & Death Note's director have chosen quantity over quality & it's almost patronising to audiences. As if the original, intellectual premise & themes would be too complicated for non-anime fans, this live action Death Note is nothing but a weightless, empty showcase of gore & cringe-worthy high school romance. Netflix's Death Note can now join the heap of ghastly films that even being heavily drunk won't make you able to watch, being unworthy of the franchise name it bears.

Rating: 3/10

If you want an actual high quality telling of the Death Note premise laid out at the start of the review, watch the anime. Still being available on Netflix as well at the time of this review, it's still one of the most compelling, thrilling & suspenseful titles in it's genre 10 years after it's run ended. Not to mention that the orchestral soundtrack becomes it's own enthralling character.

There's also another live action film & sequel that came out back in 2006, which you probably haven't heard about due to it being Japanese. It doesn't follow the events of the anime & manga 100% but it's still better than the bloody mess this review's about & it's entertaining in it's own right. If you want to learn more about a better example of a live action Death Note adaption, here's the link.