Death Note is a 2017 American neo-noir supernatural thriller film directed by Adam Wingard, based on Japanese manga by the same name created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. It centers around a Seattle Introverted high schooler named Light Turner who finds a mysterious “Death Note” that allows him to get rid of anyone that is written in the book. Below you will see my take on Netflix’s Death Note (2017) movie review
There are many problems with this movie. Direction, writing, dialogue, and few other things are more reminiscent of a TV movie. The bigger issue is that the director wanted to deviate way too much from the original material. Original was well done and loved by a lot of people. This was a wrong thing to do because he didn’t take enough of the core plot to make the movie and the characters interesting. Speaking of characters, Light is portrayed as smart but when he receives the Death Note, he becomes overly idiotic (ex: tell his girlfriend about the Death Note even though they don’t know each other that well). This makes us hate one of the best characters in the anime.
The entire anime focused on L’s and Light’s interaction and how they had this intellectual battle that was full of twists and turns. Ryuk (death God) also had a larger role to play. While a lot of people didn’t like Ryuk’s appearance in this movie, I did. He is CGI’d to hell but Willem Dafoe does a solid job with voicing the ruspy creature. Ryuk didn’t appear much in the movie which is a total shame as he was really fun to be around in the anime. He is the type of a creature that gives you advice but he secretly wants you to make a bad move just so he can be entertained. In this movie, he shows up, tells us few rules about the Death Note, and sort of blends in the background for the rest of the movie, cackling and hiding. Got to save on that budget.
The entire movie is rushed. The anime spans multiple seasons and for some reason the director thought he could fit all that into a movie. It’s barely 90 min without credits. Everything seemed to be on speed and the transactions between Light as a smart student to him as this God-like figure who can kill anybody is just abrupt and jarring. He also kills people in some really graphic ways (got to appease that R-rating).
Most of the scenes in the anime had minimal gore with most people dying from heart attacks. The fact that the movie deals with death and mortality is in itself a very dark matter. You can’t rush it because there is a lot to be covered from original source. If you rush it, it will show…not to mention piss of fans who you are trying to appease.
This brings me to the last point. Why was this made? The director obviously never saw the original anime or read manga. So why did he attempt to adopt something that had a royal fanbase who will be really upset if the movie doesn’t live up to their expectations? It didn’t just fail to live up to those expectations, but it failed as a movie. One of the reviewers online said it could pass off as a Final Destination movie and I completely agree. The characters did a good job with what they were offered, but it couldn’t save this jumbled plot.
There was no need to remake this. Nobody asked for it except Netflix, which churns out some good content and can’t be blamed for this. They financed it but it was up to the director taking this on to make sure fans would like it . It needed to be good representation of the original characters and was faithful. However, it ended in a mess with a sequel being in work (still not sure why). Not recommended.
Netflix’s Death Note (2017) movie review. Thanks for reading
