DEATH NOTE – Review

Review by Stephen Tronicek

There’s one disclaimer that needs to be laid out before this review of Adam Wingard’s zestless, boring and very bad Death Note: There is no reason for Death Note to be adapted with a whitewashed cast. There will be writings on the one strength of the movie coming from said cast and the involvement of this cast in the film. That does not mean in anyway that it’s a smart decision to have done this or that it is right, just that the fact that this happened does offer one interesting thing.

 The simple premise of Death Note is as follows. Light, a young student, comes into possession of a notebook that can cause the death of anybody whose name is written in it. Light gains a friend in Ryuk, a demon who carries out the rules of the Death Note (the notebook). As authorities start to pinpoint the multiple killings Light has performed as a serial act, an investigator named L starts to slowly uncover the identity of Light.

 The difference between the Japanese anime that this film is based on and the film itself is that  out of necessity, the film has kneecapped it’s ability to tell a compelling story.  That necessity is formed by two conditions: 1. The length of the film being under one-hundred minutes and 2. The transferring of the story into an American setting. The first condition’s effect is obvious. At one-hundred minutes the film has to tell a more contained, but still compelling, story while still covering the basic beats forming the premise of Death Note, leaving the film without the breathing room that an episodic show provides. The second condition is less defined, in fact the one thing that the filmmakers succeed at is created by that condition, but as an element of tone and artistic influence, Death Note is decidedly Japanese and transferring the story into an American setting doesn’t allow the influences of pop culture and the stylistic flourishes, that inform quite a bit of the greatness of the original anime, to be present.

 That being said, the one thing that the filmmakers did succeed at is making the film feel quite different within its setting. Most remakes or adaptations as of recent don’t bother adapting the story to the prospective culture, something that ultimately making the remake,  the same movie without the soul that the original might have had. There’s inconsistency because what may be common in one culture is not in another. Death Note doesn’t make that mistake. It feels decidedly American, with much of the new plot hinging on Light engaging in a John Hughes inspired romance that feels pretty alien from the original’s tone. Not that this makes the movie any better. In fact, this change just about ruins the identity of the main character by turning him into a boring white guy that lack almost any of the agency that the original character did. That agency instead falls to the demon Ryuk, which is a problem because Ryuk is in this movie for like two minutes. Ryuk is voiced by Willem Dafoe and any noticeable lack of Willem Dafoe is just awful, but the character basically drives Light’s original choice to use the Death Note in this version, and then the other characters just do it for him too. Seriously, there’s only a few choices that Light gets to make that define his character and most of them don’t land very well or are invalidated by the film itself. This just isn’t a good character piece or horror action film.

The direction of the film is especially flat, and that’s quite disappointing for director Adam Wingard. Wingard has always had a little too much concern for style, but his efforts like You’re Next and The Guest tend to work (Seriously, go watch The Guest). Death Note, however, makes one think some of the choices that were motivated in those films were just stylistic flourish, reflexively ruining what may be some of the best moments of Wingard’s career. It’s like the motivated style is just put up on screen for no reason. A plastering up of a lifeless mimic of genre filmmaking.

Netflix’s Death Note is a disappointment both filmically and to fans of the series. It is at once not creative enough and too creative for its own good. The original show was great as it was and this is not the original show. Unfortunately, it’s not any better.

1 of 5 Stars

DEATH NOTE is currently streaming on Netflix