Death Note is a 2017 American dark fantasy horror-thriller of a A secondary school boy who finds an extraordinary scratch pad that has dangerous forces. He can slaughter anybody he wishes essentially by writing their name inside its pages. Inebriated with his new power, he starts to take out those he regards unworthy of life.
At its best, the picture resembles Wingard's sharp-edged 2014 cult movie, "The Guest." More often, it feels like a 100-minute "previously on" montage for a cable TV show.
In trying to translate so much mythology into just one 100 minute movie, an awful lot is lost but given the sorry state of the horror genre, even the vaguest of glimmers is worth something.
Adam Wingard's adaptation of the Death Note manga is a narrative clutter, every bit as impenetrable as a stack of Japanese comics scattered across a teenager's bedroom floor.
The script, credited to Charley Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides and Jeremy Slater, is a snarl of loose ends and half-explained devices, but Wingard executes it with style ...
Cramming several tons of plot into a one-pound screenplay, the three writers ... have little option but to condense. That said, Mr. Wingard's eye for a stylish image hasn't dimmed.
