Review: In ‘Death Note,’ When Danger Calls, Reach for a Notebook

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When one artist adapts the work of another, fans of the original stand ready to pounce on any and all infidelities. So tackling “Death Note,” the sprawling, gobsmackingly detailed Japanese manga series by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, is a ballsy move — even if you’re backed by Netflix. And for the director Adam Wingard, who needs a win after last year’s disappointing “Blair Witch” sequel, the prospect of riling those fans must have been especially daunting.

Devotees of Mr. Wingard, on the other hand, will immediately recognize a sensibility — rare among horror-movie directors — that prioritizes mood over mayhem. From the dreamy opening to the flashback-heavy finale, the movie has a tone and temperament that are consistently his own. The sharply executed violence, jabs of humor and, in particular, a fascination with the seductiveness of evil (most pronounced in his 2014 feature, “The Guest”) are all here, albeit in a compressed package.

Set in Seattle (played by Vancouver, British Columbia), the story centers on Light (Nat Wolff), a smart, isolated high schooler whose world is upended when an ancient, leather-bound notebook drops from the heavens. Inside are instructions: Picture the face and write the name of whomever you would like to kill, and that soul’s expiration is assured. A test run to eliminate a troublesome bully is spectacularly successful, and soon Light and his girlfriend, Mia (an underserved Margaret Qualley), are wiping out evildoers worldwide.

Lurking in Light’s bedroom, however, is the actual killer: A mischievous Japanese death spirit named Ryuk (voiced with cackling relish by Willem Dafoe), who resembles a rotting tree trunk and behaves like an annoying goad. Yet this malevolent house pest is far less worrisome than L, a ninja-styled über-detective who is obsessively investigating the murders. As played by a mesmerizing Lakeith Stanfield, L is a twitchy oddity with an attentive handler (Paul Nakauchi) and a back story that deserves its own spinoff. Face half hidden beneath a black turtleneck, L crouches on chairs like an anime arachnid, sucking up candies and sniffing out clues.

By far the more entertaining of the two mythically entwined antagonists, L zeros in on Light with eccentric speed. And that’s the problem: 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. As a result, what should have been Light’s incremental surrender to godlike power becomes an instantaneous embrace, and what ought to have played out as an extended manhunt is resolved with embarrassing ease.

Cramming several tons of plot into a one-pound screenplay, the three writers (one of whom, Jeremy Slater, created Fox television’s thoughtful adaptation of “The Exorcist”) have little option but to condense. That said, Mr. Wingard’s eye for a stylish image hasn’t dimmed. Working with the cinematographer David Tattersall, he concocts sequences that tilt and drift, awash in neon and a soundtrack that evokes a woozy, winking romanticism. At certain moments, we can almost feel his desire to shrug off the straitjacket of fidelity and make this tale of false gods and flawed superheroes completely his own.

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