 Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Matt Rogers and welcome to my review for Netflix's new original Death Note. First of all a spoiler alert is in order not only for the movie, but also for the anime and the manga. Now I really wanted to like this movie. I went into it with a positive attitude. I was like, okay I want to enjoy this movie, but boy if it wasn't the fastest-paced movie I have ever seen in my life. Now when I heard that Netflix was adapting Death Note I automatically thought it was gonna be a series, not a 90 minute movie because it seems here that they've condensed 40 anime episodes into one movie which are for newcomers especially is a lot to take in. Light becomes an overnight sensation as Kira in a 20 second montage. It's just all of a sudden he's just this everyday schoolboy and then 20 seconds later he is this worldwide phenomenon and I feel like you can't just skip over that and just take it for what it is. And not only that from the very start of the movie there were things that paved me including Light meeting Ryuk for the first time. You can't really decide if you're supposed to be scared or you're supposed to be laughing at Light's reaction to Ryuk. And what's with Light trusting Mia almost instantly? They barely know each other's name and he's full on showing her all his secrets that he has in the Death Note. And speaking of the book itself, they've obviously changed a few rules which I get that would have to do but major things like when Mia touches the book she still can't see Ryuk. There's not much mention of heart attacks They don't really mention that when you write in a name, it's a heart attack. It sort of did a whole dealer's choice scenario where it sort of just happens by random occurrence. And another rule that bugged me was that you can only destroy one page in the whole book. So if you wanted to stop a death from happening you can only destroy one page and if you've destroyed that one page the rest of the book you have to deal with the consequences of what you've written down. I just didn't get the point of that and I thought it was just to fill up a few plot holes I guess. I have to admit that some of the kills were quite creative. I did like the first one. It definitely gave off some final destination vibes where you're seeing all these things go wrong before he finally gets beheaded which I thought was done well, but we didn't really see the mechanic of the deaths enough. In the anime you see so many deaths and it sort of becomes overwhelming after a while but I feel like this was a little underwhelming. Now the build-up to the third act in the movie was this pointless chase scene between L and Light where L is chasing Light down the street which wasn't true to character at all in my opinion and I just didn't get the point of it in the first place. It just seems silly them running around the city together. I really quite enjoyed the Basie synth score that they had going on sort of a Stranger Things type tone but it set the right tone throughout most of the movie. One thing I was surprised with though was the casting. I was understandably worried about their choices with Light and L and whatnot but Light wasn't the best but I feel like that was mainly the writer's fault rather than the actor himself. L was really done well. Again, Riders let him down a little bit but Lekith Stanfield did a great job, especially his voice. If you closed your eyes during some of his dialogue you could definitely tell it was inspired by L from the anime and Willem Dafoe was fantastic. He was perfectly creepy and villainous but also being comedic at the same time and that laugh. I also like the sneaky reference from American Horror Story, that didn't go unnoticed but in the finale when Light is revealing all this grand scheme that he did it just leaves you wanting more. It just wasn't clever enough that Death Note is one of the cleverest series I've ever seen, ever read. I just think that this just definitely was underwhelming in how clever Light was and definitely the whole match between L and Light's intelligence there just wasn't any of that at all which is overall I think where this movie falls the most. But if you haven't watched the anime I do think it is worth a watch even if it is just for Willem Dafoe's performance as Ryuk because as I said, flawless. But thanks so much for hanging out, if you had a good time then spank that like button and if you're subscribed during this video then walk on the board. This is Matt Rogers, signing off.