Review of Death Note (2017) by Ariane B — 13 Nov 2017

Death Note's premise is simple, intriguing and fairly grounded as far as anime goes, which makes it ideal as a candidate for a successful live action adaptation in the west. Unfortunately, by needlessly throwing most of the source material's plot out the window, Adam Wingard botches what should have been an easy home run for Netflix.

With Willem Dafoe perfectly cast as the death god Ryuk, the production was off to a great start, but a slew of other bad casting choices hamstring it straight out of the gate. Many of the characters' appearances in the original anime and manga were deliberately designed to convey certain important characteristics about them.

For example, the scary thing about Light Yagami was that he was a very clean, composed, and straight A student who had a very promising future ahead of him, yet even someone as seemingly good-natured and well-kempt as him could succumb to the temptations of the death note and subtly turn into a sociopath.

This whole element is entirely lost on this film's narrative, with Nat Wolff's appearance giving the impression that he's just some emo kid with a chip on his shoulder, yet at the same time his portrayal tries to skirt his sociopathic tendencies by refusing to use the death note to kill law enforcement, in stark contrast to the anime.

This makes for an incredibly boring reinvention of the character by not forcing him to make tougher morally gray decisions and strictly having him focus on criminals. Thankfully, although L's appearance doesn't even try for accuracy, his portrayal is considerably more on-point, with LaKeith Stanfield nailing many of the quirky mannerisms that make L such a fun character.

However the narrative fails to convey L's genius and deductive capabilities as effectively as the anime did. Further still, we have the character of "Mia" who is completely invented and non-canon to the original story, and cheapens the plot by serving as a generic "impress the girl" motivation for Light's decisions.

One thing to this movie's credit over the anime though was the relationship between Watari and L. Not just a mere assistant this time around, Watari takes on something of a caretaker and close friend to L as well, and this ends up working very effectively in adding some extra depth to these characters and setting up one of the few original twists in the plot that actually worked.

It's just too bad that most of the other twists largely fall flat, aren't particularly interesting, and ultimately culminate in an abrupt anticlimactic ending that leaves the whole film feeling rather unsatisfying.

And finally, what the hell is up with the totally out-of-place 80s synth rock soundtrack? This should have a dark noir atmosphere, not 80s cheeseball goofiness. Stupid decisions all around.