Review of Death Note (2017) by Fromkanga — 25 Aug 2017

Death Note isn't a good movie and that's sad because I wanted to give it a chance, I was fine that they took some liberties on the source material but it was really dull and underwhelming.

They had some interesting ideas for the story but it feels rushed, I don't know this movie is for exactly, fans will hate it because it's too different from the source material and average viewers probably won't like it for being rushed, but I do think there is good ideas in this, like the movie takes a completely different direction that the anime took which I really appreciate, there is a obvious reveal but the payoff was unexpected and it had a complete ending, so I don't think it's a complete failure.

The characters could have been interesting if they weren't so poorly acted (with some exeptions), I liked what they were trying to do with Mia because it's completely different from the anime and I thought it worked with the tone the movie was trying to do but the actress wasn't good at all, I couldn't take Light seriously because of his awful acting and that's a shame because they could've made a more human character compared from the anime.

Ryuk isn't here for long but the design was perfect and I thought that it was a very smart decision keeping him in the dark, it makes the effect look less fake.

And L was the best part of the movie because the actor is far better than anyone else in this movie, he's very different compared to the source material but he's interesting and well done in my opinion.

The music choices were awful and it kills a lot of the tension the movie was going for, especially at the climax of the movie where the song ruined it. There is a lot of gore scenes which I actually liked, they didn't want to make a kid version of death note so I appreciate they did show some gory death scenes.

It's a real shame that this movie failed to be decent because there was a lot of potential, it's well shot, some ideas were interesting and L's scenes were geunily entertaining but the lack of good acting and a story that feels really rushed and confused made this movie one of the worst movies of the year.