"Death Note suffers from an unsolvable identity crisis."-Julia Alexander, Polygon
"The ending will have you switching off your Netflix app in disgust. If you don't die from boredom before you get there."-Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com, */4
"The movie is a bored demon who bores his audience right along with him."-Andrew Lapin, NPR
"The movie merely delivers a dim dose of ho-hum horror -- one whose demise, by all rights, can be attributed to natural causes."-Brian Lowry, CNN.com
"The whole thing feels like the pilot episode of a third-rate comic-book vigilante TV show."
-Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly, C
"Cheesy, asinine, convoluted and ludicrous. On the plus side, if your eyeballs need a vigorous workout, this will have them rolling nonstop."-Inkoo Kang, The Wrap
"Part of you will wish this had been a Netflix show instead of a Netflix movie - part of you will wish Netflix had left it alone altogether."-David Erlich, Indie Wire, C-
"Whereas the more grounded scenes of Death Note anchor a startlingly bloody fantasy of power run amok, the scenes that fixate on super powers and code-busting seldom manage to rise above the realm of serviceable YA fiction."-Clayton Dillard, Slant Magazine,
"Death Note benefits from director Adam Wingard's distinctive eye and a talented cast, but they aren't enough to overcome a fatally overcrowded canvas."-Rotten Tomatoes, 41%
Well, things are once again looking rather grim. The live-action version of Death Note is now streaming on Netflix as of this writing, and has received largely negative reviews. Fan reception has also been less than favorable as a result.
When I first found out about the film being moved to Netflix (it was originally planned as a theatrical film before Warner Bros. opted to focus their energy primarily on Lego, Harry Potter and the DC Extended Universe); I had mixed feelings about the matter; and it seems my skepticism was somewhat justified. I am halfway through watching the movie as I type this, and while it may not be the worst adaptation I've seen of its kind (it's marginally better than Dragon Ball Evolution or the live-action Ghost in the Shell at least); I can still understand why many are upset, and I admit I am disappointed.
Even though there are elements that do OK, and a couple performances stand out (notably Willem Dafoe as Ryuk, who understands what kind of movie he's in and hams it up deliciously), overall; the film comes off like some teenager's fan film; and the story suffers from trying to cram 108 chapters of manga and roughly 37 episodes of anime into a single 101-minute film. The cast and story being basically a western AU is also severely undercut by many key lines and scenes being cherry-picked from the source material without much understanding of what made it work. In essence, the macabre and often darkly satirical commentary of the source material is largely downplayed in favor of a series of scenes that might have worked better as a TV series loosely cobbled together to make a narrative. While some of the kills of the victims are somewhat creative, and the CGI for Ryuk is decent for a web film; the direction shows the cast desperately trying to hold back laughter at the script taking everything deadly serious. The result definitely comes off very much like a SyFy originals movie, and the film is arguably the biggest unintentional comedy I've seen since The Room. I will make another post getting into more detail once I finish the movie (probably after I finish the Zoroark movie), but while the actors may be doing their best to read the script without cracking up; this is honestly one of the most hilariously-bad movies I've seen in ages, and I've seen my fair share in the quarter of a century I've been alive. I'm laughing so much that I'm half-expecting to see Jonah, Servo and Crow at the bottom of the screen riffing the movie (if you'll pardon the reference to a Netflix revival that doesn't totally suck).
Once I am done with the Zoroark movie recap, you will probably see my full thoughts on the movie as I start work on my next Pokémon movie recap as well as FLCL Month. As it stands now, however; the Netflix Death Note film is honestly a huge farce. As an adaptation, while it fails as an alternate continuity; you wouldn't have change that much else to make it a parody of the series. As a movie on its own, it's just as well that it's a Netflix movie now; since it's definitely clear that it would have bombed in theaters and WB and Viz knew it (the latter even removed their name from the vanity plates near the beginning of the film). Even in a summer which had no shortage of polarizing movies, Adam Wingard has delivered another adaptation of a beloved anime and manga that sacrifices the finer points of its source material in favor of spectacle and flickering lights. Once again, in trying to appeal to everyone, the film appeals to almost no one. The source material still proves to a compelling look at morality and crime even after a decade since I first was exposed to it, but the film never realizes its potential to rise above the trappings of a Hollywoodized adaptation and ultimately falls victim to the pitfalls so many other films like it have before. That will be all for now.
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