Death Note is a manga series created by Tsugumi Ohba and one that was made into an anime in 2006, to unbelievable success. The story of a Japanese teen with a god-complex, Light Yagami, being gifted the power of death over all through an otherworldly book made for a very gripping story with amoral characters that definitely don’t fit into most typical morality spectrums, a nature and tone that was methodical and planned out, but also sporadic and able to surprise its audience, and a style and visuals that was sophisticated and spotless, but also unhinged and subtly graphic (much like the main character). It was a fantastic series and it made for an amazing watch, so like most beloved anime series, it was picked up for an American live-action adaptation. The idea of making a movie on a series that spans over a long period of episodes is already ridiculous, but the handling of said adaptations has never been something people enjoyed in any attempt, and its safe to say this is another in that line-up. Set in Seattle, Washington now (because why not), teen student Light Turner (played by Nat Wolff) is suddenly gifted a mystery book from the sky, a Death Note. After being told of the rules of the notebook by the previous owner, a death God named Ryuk (voiced by Willem Dafoe); how he essentially is gifted the power of God and can decide who to kill and how to kill them, he decides to use it to kill off any criminals and wrongdoers of the world. After a girl from his school, Mia (played by Margaret Qualley) gets involved and starts helping with the kills, both of them create the codename ‘Kira’ as a symbol for people to get behind in their cause, which calls the attention of the police force, FBI and a mysterious man who goes by L (played by LaKeith Stanfield) who hopes to find and stop Kira. It’s safe to say that this film takes liberties on its original source, and this wouldn’t be too awful if the changes were smart and the final product stood on its own, it definitely does not do that.

The struggle with adapting a TV series of any variety from any culture is that it’s going to be near impossible to perfectly adapt as its going from a format which allowed for a long period of time to flesh out characters and plot-lines due to its episodic format, to a more straightforward medium where it needs to be condensed down to at least two and half to three hours long. That means things need to be changed and readjusted to work, and that is perfectly fine, but these changes need to make sense and still feel correct to the source material. This movie feels incredibly detached from its source material even with the obvious physical changes (race-changes, different location, even entirely different personalities), and it results in the movie never fully feeling correct or even its own thing. It’s too dissimilar from the original to be recognizable, but it also doesn’t go far enough with the newer elements made by screenwriters Charley Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides and Jeremy Slater to be its own thing, which results in an aimless mess of a product. Aspects that are reminiscent don’t feel warranted or even justified due to the changes and it therefore has to rely on its own creation, which is incredibly uninteresting and even pretty pathetic in the grand scheme of the things. Nothing feels earned, nothing feels engaging, nothing has a specific energy or unique passions, its not even utilizing its difference to change how the story plays out (changing the environment is fine as the story could be taken in different cultures, but nothing is really changed outside of the fact that it’s not in Japan). It ends abruptly without ever feeling like it builds to something, character motivation and connections are non-existent because the movie doesn’t have time to develop anything of substance, and despite the fact that this movie is going to get a sequel (somehow), it doesn’t feel like it needs or even deserves to be continued as anything that could be made interesting has already been killed off in this one.

The characters for the original Death Note were incredibly interesting, well written and acted, and portrayal in a manner where even the most despicable people had some connected tissue that made them incredibly interesting to watch (which would be needed as the main character is not exactly the greatest person). So, it’s clearly important that when adapting it into a movie, they remove anything that made the characters the least bit interesting and replace it with the most generic, bottom-of-the-barrel cookie-cutter stereotypes of any random character that could fit in this type of movie. The changes to how they look and even certain attributes about them doesn’t have to ruin things (Mia coming from the same school as Light, L being black, etc), what really needs to be gotten right is the personality and the delivery, and that is what really pulls this cast down so hard. The acting for a majority for the cast is a little unpolished, but the lack of connections between the characters really sours the overall project. Mia being this moody aggressive character who controls Light is nowhere near as interesting as her pop-star overly obsessive ‘Harley Quinn’ type role, LaKeith Stanfield actually does a pretty good impression of L and could have pulled the character off, but slowly divulging into a whimpering out of control mess is completely against type, Ryuk looks pretty decent and Dafoe is a perfect choice for his voice, but he feels secondary and even arbitrary in the film (you kind of forget he’s even there). Light is a special case; he is a complete loser in this movie. There is nothing similar to his original character at all; turning a really compelling anti-villain into this sniveling pathetic dweeb is really sad and lame. A lot of how the main premise worked because of his higher-than-thou personality and his methods of controlling the situation and making sure no-one knew his identity was really compelling and even tense despite the fact that he deserved to be caught, here, its blatantly obvious who he is, and he doesn’t even do it for any real good reasons, it’s a complete failure of character.

The messy nature of the tone and style of this film seems to go pretty deep into the people handling the picture overall. The director of the movie, Adam Wingard, has mostly been connected with underground lesser-known horror films like V/H/S, You’re Next and even the remake of the Blair Witch. This kind of paints a picture as to why the film’s tone is so messy; it’s presented like it has a tone of a typical horror movie, which is already a dumb idea. This doesn’t work even moreso because the original show was more crime thriller than anything explicitly scary; therefore, the overly graphic deaths and weird obsession with said kills doesn’t feel the same within this environment that kept its gruesomeness in how subtly and basic the kills were. It didn’t need a ‘Final Destination’ level of kill absurdities, sometimes just a person’s heart stopping was creepy enough, and the show had this frantic energy portrayed in the art-style and dramatic music that it made the tone so well set; it would be kinetic, energized, and artistic, and that would counteract the countless deaths that were unfolding. Here, nothing is consistent or fleshed out about this environment. The show’s dull color palette, boring shot composition by cinematographer David Tattersall, and weird inclusion of an 80s soundtrack and forgettable score by Atticus and Leopold Ross doesn’t give the movie a distinct style, it just makes things more unfocused and confused. None of these aspect affect anything and just feel like attempts to desperately try and give this movie an identity.

Is it really any surprise this movie is garbage? Everybody has already grown accustom to the horrors that come from live-action anime adaptations, but even still, its pretty annoying how a majority of these films never really get it right, even when trying to create their own thing out of a familiar franchise. This movie didn’t need to do everything similar to the anime or even the manga (it would be boring and predictable if it did), but if you’re going to change things up, they need to be logical and they need to be interesting, and this movie doesn’t do that. The story is watered-down, predictable and lazy, the characters are incredibly unlikeable with awful acting, poor characterization and not a single bit reminiscent of their original counterparts, and whatever cool, graceful energy the original brought has been replaced with lame overly graphic kills, dumb 80s music that doesn’t fit at all, and a style and tone where ‘’Give me my f**king book’ gets to be a phrase and changes that don’t even make sense with the culture change (apparently Yagami and Misa are too strange a name, but Light is apparently still totally cool). Don’t even bother watching this movie, it doesn’t even deserve to be viewed as an awfully interesting experience. If there’s anything coming out dead from this, it’s the movie itself.

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