Death Note
Warner Bros. | Release Date: August 25, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
43
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
3
Mixed:
7
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
72
Paste MagazineZach BudgorAug 31, 2017
Wingard’s Death Note moves like a bullet and doles out practical gore and overheated melodrama in equal measure. Read full review
70
IGNBlair MarnellJul 24, 2017
What’s frustrating is that with better lead performers and a tighter script, Wingard could have made a great adaptation. Instead it settles when it should have soared. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineClayton DillardAug 21, 2017
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. Read full review
60
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisAug 24, 2017
Perhaps stifled by the cultural and commercial clout of its source material (a multimedia juggernaut of books, movies, television shows and a stage musical), Death Note feels rushed and constricted. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyAug 24, 2017
The result is perversely watchable, which puts it a cut above the average inane wannabe franchise-starter. With no likable characters or internal suspense to keep it in check, Wingard’s direction sputters out into a cloud of slickness and pastiche. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesNoel MurrayAug 24, 2017
What Wingard has delivered is a fitfully entertaining, clearly compromised hybrid of action, horror and science-fiction. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyAug 24, 2017
The whole thing feels like the pilot episode of a third-rate comic-book vigilante TV show. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeAug 24, 2017
The movie never quite reckons with just how twisted a concept it’s peddling, and that’s easily the scariest thing about it. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterJustin LoweAug 22, 2017
Rather than relying on amplifying typical genre conventions, Wingard methodically lays the foundation to set up this particular Death Note adaptation for a potential sequel, but the outcome is more deliberate than inspired. Read full review
42
IndieWireDavid EhrlichAug 21, 2017
The only reason to take such a uniquely Japanese story and transplant it to Seattle is to explore how its thorny moral questions might inspire different answers in an American context, so for this retread to all but reduce America to its whiteness indicates an absence of context more than anything else. It’s the most glaring symptom of a film that utterly fails to investigate its premise. Read full review
33
The PlaylistGary GarrisonAug 21, 2017
Wingard’s film is an incoherent mess of tones and styles, confused character motives, and murky narratives. Read full review
25
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerAug 26, 2017
In adapting Death Note for a presumably American audience, Wingard loses the whole of its identity, and never finds a different one with which to replace it. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoAug 25, 2017
Several of the changes to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s brilliant manga have already been widely reported, including the whitewashing of the entire project by relocating it from Japan to Seattle, but those are just the symptoms of a greater disease known as complete creative bankruptcy. Read full review
10
TheWrapInkoo KangAug 21, 2017
The new horror-thriller is cheesy, asinine, convoluted and ludicrous. On the plus side, if your eyeballs need a vigorous workout, this will have them rolling nonstop. Read full review
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