Movie Review - Death Note (2017)

MegaSoulhero Death Note is a Netflix original movie based on the popular manga/anime of the same name. I'm personally not a fan of the Death Note anime. But then again, I'm not a fan of anime in general. But something that I absolutely can't stand is live action adaptations of anime! Just look at Dragonball Evolution and Ghost in the Shell! Those movies are both terrible! Anime wasn't meant to be turned into live action! But I still decided to watch the live action Death Note movie just because.

It stars former Naked Brothers Band member Nat Wolff as Light Yagami, or Light Turner as this movie calls him, who finds a notebook known as the Death Note that allows him to write down the name of any person and how he wants them to die and that death will actually happen. If I had that notebook I would totally put Taylor Swift's name in it. He uses the notebook to get rid of criminals. But then he gets tracked down by a detective named L who tries to prove that Light is a murderer known as Kira. And I sat down and watched the whole thing on my phone. Wow! This is such a dumb movie! I am not a fan of the anime but after watching this movie, it made me think I wasn't giving the series the credit it deserved! Let me talk about the positives first. Willem Dafoe as Ryuk! I applaud the casting choice for this character! That was just brilliant! Dafoe gives such an excellent performance! This is top notch! He was great as Green Goblin in Spider-Man, and he really shines in this movie as well! Whoever's idea it was to cast Willem Dafoe as Ryuk should be proud! They did a great job at making the character very creepy! The voice performance as well as the character's face expressions really help with that! The character is CGI and it looks very convincing! Ryuk was definitely the highlight of the film!

But unfortunately, that's the only casting they got right. The rest of the cast is HORRIBLE!!! Nat Wolff as Light is just stupid! They turned the character into a weird emo kid! I don't have a problem with white washing as long as the actors give good performances. That was not the case with this film! Most of the actors looked like they were overacting! Some of their performances were so bad that I couldn't help but laugh at how bad their acting was! There are a lot changes made to make the movie different from the series, but the changes aren't very good! The characters, with the exception of Ryuk, are awful! Light was one of the few things I liked about the anime series. He was power crazy and wanted to rule the world and stuff. But here, he's just a regular high school teen who gets bullied and is a practically a coward. And the first person he kills is a bully at school who was messing with a girl. And his only motivation for killing people is to impress a girl! It's just so stupid! By the way, I really hate Mia! Light's love interest! She's mostly there just so the movie could have a teen romance plot and it doesn't work very well! The character "L" was also completely ruined! There's is nothing great about the character! I also find it very unbelievable that he was able to find out that Light was Kira pretty quickly.

And that leads to another problem. The movie is rushed! Like REALLY rushed! Even at the start of the film! Literally two minutes into the film, the book falls from the sky! Just like that! There was no build up! It seemed very lazy! I also felt like the relationship between Light and Mia happened way too fast! We barely see the two interacting together, and then he tells her about the book and they start kissing two scenes later! By the way, did I mention that Light is an IDIOT!? There's this one scene where he's reading the Death Note in a gymnasium WHILE PEOPLE ARE IN THERE!!! And then Mia sees him and he gets caught. So he confesses to her what the book is. Because he made the stupid decision of reading it in public! Most of the cinematography was bad and hard to look at! There were tons of moments with these weird camera angles that try too hard to make the scenes more intense than they should be! They even managed to ruin the violence! It all looks so cheap! Looks like a fan made film! One guy falls off of a roof and it did not look convincing at all! The music choices are horrendous! They're not Fifty Shades Darker bad, but still pretty bad. And the ending of the film is just too stupid for words! I was like "what am I watching!?" It was so bad! Just awful!

Death Note is worse than Ghost in the Shell! It makes me respect the anime a lot more now! It deserves a lot better than this! The movie is poorly written, changes the characters in the worst way possible, has a ton of rushed moments, and has a bunch of stupid scenes! If you're a fan of the manga/anime, you're going to hate it this movie! If you're NOT a fan of the manga/anime or haven't seen it, you're still going to hate the movie! It is very bad! It's not the worst movie I've seen this year, but I honestly can't recommend this to anyone! Live action adaptations of anime don't work! They need to stop doing that!

Score: 2/10

Comments

Oh dear... rly netflix - visitor (8/26/2017)

Nice rant. Unfortunately, I know quite a lot more anime that Hollywood and even Japan want to adapt into live-action. Granted, whitewashing may not be an issue in the latter as much as the former, and I can agree with the stance that whitewashing isn't too bad if the actors are at least great in their performing roles. Either way, I don't know why this trend of live-action adaptations of anime into live-action movies or T.V. series continues even though it fails at every turn. I won't list these upcoming live-action adaptations since I don't want you to have to put up with them. So all I can say is:

*Brings out a clock Filthy Frank style* HOLLYWOOD, IT'S TIME TO STOP. - visitor (8/26/2017)

Death note anime was good why hollywood why? - visitor (8/27/2017)

The trailer pretty much said everything about this film just avoid it at all cost. Also IGN gave it an 7? - visitor (8/27/2017)

How... - visitor (8/28/2017)

As a cheap gore movie, it's fine I suppose, but watch it as a comedy and it hits that so bad it's good realm easily. - cjWriter1997 (8/30/2017)

Live-action anime adaptations are always awful. This one was really bad but at least it wasn't as bad as Dragon Ball: Evolution *shivers* - visitor (9/3/2017)

I knew this wasn't going to be good...but I didn't think it would be this bad. - RoseRedFlower (1/13/2018)

Curse you netflix - BoyGenius234 (1/30/2018)