Review of Death Note (2017) by Dustin S — 27 Aug 2017

Death Note the fantasy horror thriller being made into a film all thanks to Netflix. I am coming from a fresh perspective, which has never seen or read the original Japanese source material. I am not sure how accurate this film is or how different. I will say I feel like the supernatural tone with the creepy mysterious death god worked well on screen. Death Note is not terrible or great. It is entertaining for what it is and the theme of the movie tried covering some relatable issues with today's world problems. The performances were decent and the visual effects were mediocre.

The films plot gets right to the point. It begins with Light Turner (Nat Wolff) in high school, which is dealing in selling copies of exams answers to students. A mysterious notebook falls to the ground right next to him called "Death Note." He soon enough gets caught in the middle of protecting another student from being bullied and gets knocked out himself. Soon enough in detention, a death god Ryuk (voiced by Willem Dafoe) appears and informs Light about the rules of the notebook. Write a name down, how they should get killed, and remember the face when writing the name. Light soon tries it out in trying to get rid of a bully, and then searches for criminals that are escaping the justice system, or on live news feed holding hostages. Light's girlfriend Mia (Margaret Qualley) tries to help with them justifying on who should be executed using this death god. Light's father James (Shea Whigham) is on this trail of mysterious deaths which is trying to stop the body counts from going up. Which creates a divide with the civilians as they believe its Kira known for mysterious god taking out the criminals and the people support the events for doing good to society. While James and an obsessed compulsive detective L (Lakeith Stanfield) is on the trail of Kira, and suspects that it could be someone close that is using the death god.

I liked how the plot relates to real world situations such as using the death god to bring down terrorists, criminals, etc. Then, it all has repercussions with how is the society going to react to the crime rate going down. How are the law enforcements going to react that they have possibly a good guy eliminating all the bad people out there? Will they side with the kira? Or will they retaliate to stop it? Since the issue of who decides on who should die or live? It is the questions that Light Turner struggles with, when he wants to do good in the world. But the limits will only get him so far, before his actions will have consequences.

Willem Dafoe as the death god is menacing. It is scary looking with his punk rock looking outfit and look. It is something that will give you chills when you see the shadows in the dark. Nat Wolff and Margaret Qualley were both decent as Light and Mia.

The visual effects were decent. The look on the death god was great. There is some climatic sequence shot on the ferris wheel that looked cheaply made.

My issues with the film which I could not stand was Lakeith Stanfield performance. His character is by far the most annoying person you will ever see. A hardcore detective that eats lots of candy to keep his insulin up and has his face covered most of the time and acts like a teenage idiot for an adult by hopping on table's chairs. Lakeith performance still acted like he was the hypnotized person in the Get Out movie. And his performance in Death Note was no different.

Also, the direction with the tone felt like it had no idea what it wanted to be if it was teen supernatural comedy or full on thriller. Especially, when characters are falling to their deaths and some love sappy song ends up playing in the scene.

Overall, Death Note is a fair film. Nat Wolff and Margaret Qualley were decent. Willem Dafoe was great and menacing. The plot and concept had a nice exploration with the themes. But Lakeith Stanfield was irritating and annoying every time he was on screen. And the direction was becoming incoherent on what kind of tone it wanted to be.

I rate the film 3 out of 5 stars.