Movie of the Week: Death Note

Alexa: When I was in middle school, I thought nearly all horror movies were awesome regardless of how objectively good they actually were. But not even 14-year-old Alexa would have liked the hot mess that is “Death Note.” I was wary from the moody, self-serious, slow-mo opening sequence, and it only got worse from there. This movie is primarily style over substance. Many of the directing choices feel amateurish, which is surprising when you look at Adam Wingard’s previous credits. Some of his earlier works like “You’re Next” and “The Guest” had a fair amount of buzz surrounding them when they were released. The explanation for the ending is outlandish even for a horror film. Light is a pretty frustrating hero, and Mia is a straight-up psycho. Are we actually supposed to be rooting for these people? Nat Wolff has proven to be a talented young actor in some of his other projects, and, bless him, he tries so hard to act through that terrible hairstyle and make Light somewhat compelling. Willem Dafoe plays creepy and weird so well, so he was a solid choice for the death god Ryuk. Lakieth Stanfield, who readers may remember as the one thing we all liked about “War Machine,” was at least an interesting foil as L, and like Wolff, tried so hard to make lemonade out of the massive pile of lemons he was given to work with. And I had no idea “Death Note” was based on a popular manga series until I read about it after the fact, so the film’s whitewashing of the story is also a strike against it, yet another instance of a troubling Hollywood trend. In summary, don’t waste your time with this one.

Joel: It’s clear watching this movie that this is a story intended to be told over several hours. Everything in the movie felt like it was happening so fast. This book comes out of nowhere. It’s a far fetched premise but every character who hears it accepts it almost immediately. No time to be sceptical for more than a few seconds about the Death Note, we’ve got so much story to cram in here. Emotions are cranked up to eleven at the drop of a hat. Light, the main character, is responsible for the death of a school bully, and the story flies right past that to the next plot point. There’s no time for the character, or the audience to digest, what’s happening. Is he scared? Is he excited? Could the power go to his head? Does he feel guilty? Oh wait, the movie moved past three more plot points while I was trying to ask a question. Because this movie is trying to cram so much into its runtime, the entire thing moves forward at a breakneck pace. There’s never really any time for the characters to develop. We get a lot of motivation spoonfed to us because there’s no time to discover it through the scenes. This movie is trying to cram way too much into it. Every scene feels like it’s the one that’s ramping up to the climax of the movie. Halfway through the movie I couldn’t believe that there was still an hour to go. Not because the movie dragged and it felt like I had been watching for two hours already, but because everything was moving forward so quickly, I couldn’t see how the movie could have enough material to fill the next hour.

And even though the movie feels like it’s trying to fit the whole plate and the kitchen sink into its runtime, it still feels like there’s a lot of things that could be missing or are left unexplored. L is probably the most interesting character in the movie, but his backstory never really gets any time to grow. It falls by the wayside, and isn’t really picked up again after a certain point. I feel like there is a lot of mythology and world building that you could do with this concept. Where did the Death Note come from? What is the history of Ryuk? Is it the only Death Note out there? The person who left the warning in the book, who was that? Were there any more clues? Who invented the Death Note? Is Ryuk in charge of the Death Note, or is he a slave to it’s commands? If he didn’t create it then who did? How is this character and this Note tied together? There’s so much potential for a complex story to develop, but instead we get, “This is a notebook, that is a death god. Let's go.”

The acting is probably the strongest thing in the movie. Nat Wolff does a fairly impressive job as Light. The script does this character no favors. There’s no time for you to develop any empathy for Light and he comes across as really unlikeable, but Wolff does his best at forcing some likeability and relatability into this character and he comes very close to succeeding at several points. Lakieth Stanfield also does a great job with the character of L, creating a compelling character when the movie doesn’t give him the tools to really make that possible. Stanfield is able to take what appears to be a list of quirks that are there for quirkiness sake and string them together into a coherent and interesting character. Willem Dafoe is probably the biggest name associated with the movie. He plays Ryuk which means that you never see his face, though you don’t need to. That voice and laugh are instantly recognizable, though because Ryuk is so often obscured by the shadows it’s impossible not to visualize Light talking with the Green Goblin more often than not. Dafoe uses the exact same laugh that he used when he was torturing Spider-Man and once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.

All in all, the movie is a letdown, but the biggest frustration of all comes from how clear it is that this is a story that’s begging to be told in a longer format. If only there was a version of this story that was longer than 110 minutes. If only.

Chris: Where do you even start with a movie like this? There’s plenty of problematic elements and questionable decisions that led to an overall “meh” movie. The cast (bad haircuts notwithstanding) was talented enough to bring what would’ve been a bad movie into “eh, it’s okay, I guess” territory but there’s only so much they could’ve done. There’s so much more that could’ve been done with the source material and I think what went wrong here is that the decision was made to almost turn this movie into a live-action anime. That decision would’ve been fine if the movie leaned into the absurdity/campy nature that a live-action anime would entail but Death Note is a movie that took everything seriously in spite of outrageous and animated characters. So overall I think that is my biggest complain, the tone just doesn’t fit the movie. Also, I would’ve liked for more interaction with Ryuk but I understand a movie like this only has a limited amount of funds to go towards CGI but Ryuk’s dialogue was probably the best in the movie even if it sounded like Green Goblin was trying to get a couple teenagers to kill people.

Jason: It is clear to me that I am the only one out of us four IBA reviewers who is a big time anime fan. As such, I have been aware of the story of DeathNote for a good long while. I watched the anime and subsequently read some of the manga when it was new to the US years ago. I've even seen the older Japanese live action movie. This film is clearly inferior to all three of these mediums. That being said, I feel that it is a decent effort to add an American voice into the story. The effects and some of the more graphical shots felt like they belonged in the anime world. The feel was also quite good and true to the story. The portrayal of L was spot-the-hell-on. There were changes made to make it American that did lose something in translation. For instance, Light’s original surname is Yagami. This is something of a pun in that it incorporates the word for god. Turner doesn't pack the same kind of intentional punch. Another criticism I have is that they took the whole first story arc, which took 20 something episodes of the anime and 20 something issues of the manga, and crammed it into 75 minutes. To accommodate this, they smushed the story and made everything feel rushed. They also smushed characters together. Mia is a combination of three or four different characters from different seasons of the show. It felt muddy.

Other than that, I enjoyed what I saw. Willem Dafoe is the perfect choice to voice Ryuk. His tone and inflection really stick the landing on getting that character onto film. And that costume. Awesome. There was one shot in particular, when he is outside the Turner house surrounded by police lights, that really was visually impressive. The red and blue we're playing in and around the quills on Ryuk’s back and it really looked fantastic.

I don't know what the rest of these knuckleheads are talking about. I was entertained.