Review: Death Note (2017)

Death Note (2017)

Rated TV-MA

Score: 3 out of 5

I'm going to warn you right now: I have little familiarity with the original Japanese Death Note manga and anime beyond knowledge of the basic premise and having seen the first episode of the latter. I did not go into this movie as one of the many fans of Death Note, who, from my experience, by and large see Netflix's American live-action adaptation as having utterly betrayed the source material, to the point where a Google search for "Netflix anime adaptation" turns up plenty of mocking memes. No, I went into this movie as a fan of director Adam Wingard who was scrolling through Netflix on Halloween night and wanted to throw on something spooky for myself, my brother, and some friends that none of us had seen before. I think I can safely judge this movie on its own merits, without referring back to (what I'm guessing is) a better version of the material. So please, don't shoot me. Okay?

I thought this movie was alright.

Oh, I'm sure I would've hated it if I were a fan of the manga or anime. It's far from a perfect movie and far from Wingard's best. It's weighed down by a fairly flat protagonist and late divergences into plot weirdness that undermine the fairly grounded-yet-stylized "'90s Ashley Judd/Morgan Freeman psychological thriller, but with the supernatural" tone that it's going for. What it does have, however, is a hell of a hook, a compelling cat-and-mouse game between the killer and the detective chasing him, and a really good supporting cast, particularly Willem Dafoe doing what he does best and Margaret Qualley as a darkly subverted take on your typical love interest. I can only fairly recommend this to people not familiar with the source material, as even what little I've seen of the anime indicates that there are certain things that it does far better than this movie. As a purely standalone feature film, however, I definitely enjoyed myself.

The basic premise is that there exists a notebook called the Death Note where, if you write somebody's name in it while picturing that person's face in your head, that person dies. You can specify how they die, there are all manner of arcane rules that govern how to use the book, but what's important is that it kills your target dead. The Death Note's power is tied to a death god named Ryuk, who gives it to various people to do with as they wish, seemingly for kicks. And today, he's given the book to Light Turner, the bullied, nerdy teenage son of a detective in Seattle. At Ryuk's urging, Light uses the book to murder a bully whose fist put him in the nurse's office, and from there, he quickly starts going after bigger fish, like the man who killed his mother in a hit-and-run, or a criminal who made the news by taking his family hostage. He shows the book to Mia Sutton, a cheerleader who he's interested in, and she pushes him to start cleansing the world of its worst monsters, from terrorist leaders to cartel bosses to mafia dons. As the bodies pile up, international law enforcement starts to notice, and they recruit a mysterious detective who goes only by the alias "L". This man seems to have not only figured out that "Kira" isn't actually Japanese, like his alias indicates and his colleagues seem to believe, but that he's living in Seattle and may be connected to the police. What's more, L has also somehow figured out that, however Kira is killing people, he needs a name and a face to do it, which is why he conceals his identity with a mask and a fake name. Very quickly, L's trail leads straight to Light's door, and he and Mia have to scramble to stay one step ahead, all while Ryuk constantly eggs him on and urges him to take the war right to the cops.

The weakest link in this film was unfortunately a central one. Nat Wolff did not make for a particularly compelling lead as Light, a kid who we're supposed to buy as conflicted about being pressured into killing by both Ryuk and Mia. Even with my limited knowledge of the original story, this is one area where I feel that going with the original portrayal of Light Yagami as a brilliant, narcissistic overachiever who embraces the Death Note as a weapon would have worked better -- and could have easily been translated to an American context by giving him shades of either a mass shooter fed up with the world or an overzealous activist on a moral crusade. Here, however, Light Turner spends most of the movie as a pinball protagonist pushed around by others and seemingly having little agency of his own, and Wolff's performance did not do much to flesh him out beyond the writing. Oftentimes, he was the least interesting character in the film.

Where it succeeded was with the people around him. Willem Dafoe was excellent as Ryuk, a devilish trickster who seeks to tempt Light and lead him to kill people. The special effects work made Ryuk legitimately scary, keeping him mostly in the shadows and letting his spiky silhouette and grotesque, monstrous face do all the talking, but it was Dafoe who made him truly memorable as a monster for this film's more horror-leaning moments. Dafoe is a pro at playing these sorts of larger-than-life, ominous figures who nonetheless seem to obey their own particular code of honor and fair play, and his performance meant that, while Ryuk wasn't on screen too often, he always hung over the events of the film like a devil on Light's shoulder. On Light's other shoulder was the film's other devil and fellow MVP, Margaret Qualley as Mia. Initially presented as something resembling the obligatory shallow love interest, Mia turns out to have far more interesting things to do than just nag him about how he doesn't care about her. She is, if anything, far more gung-ho about using the Death Note to kill people than Light is, to the point that even Ryuk comments that he probably should've given her the book in the first place -- an assessment I found myself agreeing with. Qualley's performance was such that, had they gone with a portrayal of Light more like in the anime, they could've easily cast her as Light and not had to change anything except the gender. She was doing all of the heavy lifting in the film's central story of Light and Mia, and wound up elevating Light as a character thanks to how well she sold her part.

On a writing level, the character of L, the detective tracking Light, stumbles into a fair bit of weirdness concerning his backstory (apparently, he was raised from childhood to be some kind of super-detective) that, while I can't say for sure given that I haven't read it, felt like it was pulled directly out of the manga, but didn't really translate well to the film's more grounded setting. I'm of the school that, if you're gonna incorporate supernatural or sci-fi elements into a story, you should either a) ground the rest of the setting in gritty realism and have it react to these elements (the "one big lie" rule), or b) fully embrace a fantastical world and let those elements run wild. This movie tries to have it both ways, establishing Light's Seattle as being in the real world but then throwing in such a larger-than-life character. Either I would've found a more grounded reason for L to have kept his true identity a secret even before meeting Light (maybe he tangled with some very bad people who now want him dead? Hey, think of how Light could exploit that in an attempt to convince L to leave him alone!), or I would've made this a movie like Knives Out, a crime thriller with a cast of over-the-top characters ranging from righteous investigators to cackling, power-mad villains where L's backstory would've fit in nicely. It's a shame, because I liked LaKeith Stanfield in the part. He was basically playing the Morgan Freeman role in those '90s psychological thrillers I mentioned earlier, but I bought him as a genius detective who manages to quickly figure out what's actually going down, the only thing stopping him being his recognition that, if he gets too close or makes his move too recklessly, Light can go after his colleagues even if he can't target him personally. The character may have had a bit too much anime weirdness attached to him, but Stanfield was able to sell it.

Behind the camera, Wingard is at his best when he's inserting his trademark bursts of horror, be they in the form of Ryuk's appearances or the moments of brutal violence inflicted upon Light's victims. He also lent the film a nice atmosphere, starting with a quickly-closing circle for Light as L moves in on him but then turning into a standoff between them as neither can really hurt the other without causing more problems. The rainy Seattle setting and the score by Atticus and Leopold Ross lent the film a nice, grim mood as well, one that I found myself wishing the film was more attached to in its writing. I've always been a fan of Wingard ever since You're Next, and his direction meant that this film was always interesting to watch even in its more off-kilter moments.

The Bottom Line

As an adaptation, I honestly can't say how this movie fares. As a standalone movie, however, I was intrigued enough that now I'm interested in reading the manga and watching the anime, even if it had some pretty notable flaws holding it back. I think that's pretty solid praise.