Death Note Review

Directed by Adam Wingard

Written by Charley Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides and Jeremy Slater

"You're the one who flew into the sun, I'm just here to make sure you burn"

The legendary manga and anime, once again, becomes a live action feature film, but this time... It's American. The trailers were not outstanding but we only really cared about the reveal of Ryuk, and I can't say it disappointed. The actual movie on the other hand... Did. Let's talk about Death Note.

The basic plot of the original manga is still present, Light finds the Death Note, uses it to kill criminals, meets Ryuk, and the mysterious L tries to find Light (now going by the alias Kira), and tries to bring him to justice. The American movie introduces some new plot lines that include Light's love interest Mia and Light's mother's murderer. In Death Note, outcast Light finds a mysterious note book that the death god: Ryuk teaches him how to use. Turns out that Light now has the power to kill anyone he knows the name and face off, in any physically possible way he wants by writing their name and details of death in the Death Note. He uses his powers to kill criminals, leading a lot of the public to believe he's an almighty savior. Light teams up with fellow outsider Mia, from school and together they fall in love over their desire for twisted justice. They both eventually have different plans for the note book and things start get out of control when the mastermind L attempts to track them down. I don't love the idea of adding a big love story into the original plot, simply because movies don't need them, no matter how convinced big studios are they do, but Death Note introduces a few things that make it easier to digest. The couple start with Bonnie and Clyde vibes before having disagreements about who to kill with the Death Note. The main problem lies with the way the relationship is treated. I didn't feel like the relationship looked as strong as Death Note implied it was and we didn't see enough significant growth during the movie to feel the impact of the last act, where the movie tries really hard to push feelings out of you. I never cared about the relationship and I never found the characters that appealing, so it looked like it was kicking up a storm about nothing. The last act has some strong moments, don't get me wrong, but I never felt the full weight of it. Most of the bond forms over a montage near the beginning of the movie, which is not enough.

Death Note rushes a lot of the earlier stages of the original story to get straight into the action, which makes sense because you're fitting a huge story into a typical sized movie. Death Note also makes a point to introduce Ryuk almost immediately, which should mean we get more of him for longer but after the first act, he barely shows up! Which is just a waste of easily, the most entertaining character in the movie. The rules of the Death Note aren't as clear as they are in the books and certain rules are changed just to fit the script. The script as a whole honestly isn't very impressive, but we'll talk about how it's improved on soon.

The main character Light is your usual broody movie teenager, he doesn't fit in and he's awkward with girls. If you know Death Note well, you'll know Light actually fits in fine, in fact, girls love him. He's not even interested in girls, he only really used them to cover for using the Death Note. Light also used to have a God complex and a tendency to dramatically overreact. In the new movie, Light is a lot softer and becomes quite nervous about the use of the Death Note. He also falls in love. He can be smart but he never feels as smart as the original character. I understand wanting to mold the character a little differently to change up the story, but at the point Light is in the new movie, they should have just changed his name and used a totally new character. They are just pointlessly ruining the character at this point. Nat Wolff acts strong here fortunately, which is Lights only saving grace. Mia is played by Margaret Qualley and she's your usual bad girl character. Once again, she's played very well, unfortunately she's just not a very likable character and you automatically don't trust her, even though Death Note acts like you should. The character of L is interestingly played by Lakeith Stanfield and is actually close to the original character's portrayal. We only get a couple insightful scenes towards the end so you never quite connect with him and there's something just unremarkable about him, despite being one of the best characters from the manga. Simply put, Ryuk is awesome. He's funny and perfectly cast with Willem Dafoe. I always remembered him being along for the ride in the manga, he barely got involved and he would just give out information when needed, he was just there to see what Hell Light caused. He was basically a big scary drama queen. In the new movie, he gets very involved with the Death Note and tries to mess with Light, I could have forgiven this because he's so entertaining if he was actually in the movie for a decent amount of time. HUGE missed opportunity here.

One of the biggest things going for Death Note is it's direction. Adam Wingard makes the script look at lot better than it really is and he knows how to make a scene, just that little bit stronger. The soft rock and neon colors would have been a problem if they weren't so well handled. It doesn't suit the original setting but this movie rocks the aesthetic. Without Wingard, this movie would have really suffered. Not all of the scenes reach the full impact the movie wants to depict but I believe that's a problem with the development of the story and the script. Death Note does feature some scenes that baffle me, like the big chase scene towards the end. It's not badly directed but it's just silly. Characters fly over shit and unnecessarily throw themselves around, it's just weird.

The effects are good. I'm a sucker for strong gore and Death Note shows some entertaining death scenes with some horribly good effects. The set ups for the death scenes can get really silly but the results make up for it. It's almost impossible not to get Final Destination vibes from these scenes though. I also really like the effects on Ryuk, I didn't think the character would work without being fully CGI but I believe Ryuk is a mix of CGI and practical and he comes off really foreboding. So the effects in Death Note are reasonably strong as well.

And that's Death Note. You could say "Don't judge it as an adaptation of the manga, judge it as it's own story", which is fair, but that doesn't save the movie. The characters still aren't that likable, the script still isn't solid, the rules still aren't as clear as they could be and Ryuk is still highly missed out. I do recommend you don't try to view it as an adaptation if you're really into the manga or the anime, because you'll just force yourself to hate it. For all of it's issues, Death Note does have some strong points, some good performances and it's definitely entertaining enough to deserve a watch. I've seen a lot of people comparing it to The Last Airbender and Dragonball: Evolution, and that's just ridiculous. As far and manga/anime movie adaptations go, it's certainly one of the better ones but we are no closer to a great manga/anime adaptation.

Rating: ***

Better than > The Bye Bye Man Worse than > The Neon Demon

Main Pros -Strong cast/acting -Great direction/Well produced style -Awesome effects -Ryuk