This film isn’t exactly horror, it’s more of a supernatural mystery/suspense. It’s the type of film you have to invest yourself in, though I want to point out that it isn’t as slow as some J-horror can be. It moves along at a steady pace, and usually throws something at you just when you think it’s getting a little too quiet. It also provides some fresh concepts that kept me interested throughout.

The story is about law student Light Yagami, who discovers a black notebook lying on the street. The notebook includes instructions on the inside front cover explaining that any name written in the book will cause that person to die in less than a minute. If the cause of death is not specified, the person dies of a heart attack.

Light thinks it’s a joke at first, but desides to write the names of criminals he feels were not properly punished by the government into the note. Sure enough, each criminal drops dead, and quite painfully too. Light soon attacts a cult following, naming their unknown god of death “Kira”.

Soon after Light meets Ryuk, a Shinigami or “death god” who explains that only those who touch the death note can see him. In a refreshing change from the old Western tradition of Faustian demons granting power for some nasty payment later on, Ryuk explains that Light can just give the book away if he doesn’t want to use it, and the Shinigami will erase all memory of the book and those killed by it. Light decides to keep the book, enjoying the power he has found to dole out his own brand of justice. Ryuk floats around on leathery wings, follows Light around to watch the fun, and eats apples that Light gives him.

The police are at a loss to stop this Kira from his killing spree, so they turn to a mysterious master detective known only as “L”, who converses with them via a laptop computer which distorts his voice and masks his identity. L begins to deduce Kira’s location by examining the patterns of the killings.

At this point the film becomes an elaborate game of cat and mouse as L and the police attempt to draw out Kira, and Light’s efforts to stay one step ahead and avoid being identified as Kira. As the story unfolds, we see the lengths both Kira and L and the police are willing to go to achieve their goals, even to the point of sacrificing the lives of others.

Usually I watch foreign films with subtitles but I watched this film with the English dub. The acters do a better than average job and come as close as possible to casting voices that match the characters and synching them. Brian Drummond turns in a noteworthy performance as the raspy voice of Ryuk, a completey CGI character. And the Ryuk character isn’t all that dominant, showing up here and there throughout. The real story revolves around the humans.

The Shinigami has the power to kill humans at will through the use of the note, and it’s briefly mentioned that they do engage in that act although it’s not elaborated on. Shinigami can look at a person and see their true name and the number of days and hours left in their lifespan. When that person’s name is written and they die, that lifespan is transferred to the Shinigami.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s refreshing to see a story involving some demonic entity that isn’t directly responsible for the deaths in the film. In Western cinema, the demon rips out people’s guts firsthand or grants them some type of power only to reveal at film’s end a plot to corrupt the person and take advantage of them for evil purposes. In this tale, Ryuk’s motivation is that he’s bored and just wants to see what a random human will do with the power to kill at will. He doesn’t care what happens as long as he’s entertained.

The twists and turns of the drama might be a little hard to follow at times, so don’t do something while you’re watching this as you don’t want to be distracted. It does get a little silly and far fetched at times but it keeps moving along.

The DVD includes a series of short featurettes with comments by director Hideo Nakata, best known for making Ring, Ring 2 and Dark Water. Those who found themselves tired of seeing girls with black hair in their faces shuffling around in a tediously paced storyline will have no such worries here. I was a little bugged by the interface for this section. The featurettes are viewed by clicking on floating apples and there is no “play all” function, but it’s not that bad. I just sometimes wish DVD menu trasitions wouldn’t insist on being cute when I just want to get to the content.

Though the ending gives you the distinct feeling of a sequel in the waiting, you’ll find a complete enough story here. I did want to get the second film just to see more of the duel between geniuses. I’ll tell you about it in my next post for the review of the sequel Death Note 2: The Last Name.

This film is rated 4 out of 5 unoriginal and pathetically cute ghoul icons. I don’t usually number rate films, but this is how people do things so here you go for those who need it.

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