Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Adam Wingard's followup to Blair Witch looks to be more in line with his indie work in terms of tackling darker material with a sense of fun. The Guest and You're Next are his current best examples of striking that tone.
On paper Death Note is closer to Blair Witch (which I think was a pretty decent sequel that happened to come out about 5 years too late) in that it's a well known property, but the teaser that Netflix released this morning shows Wingard's cinematic eye is definitely front and center, which automatically makes this one feels like his better low budget outings.
Now the teaser is highly tonal in nature. Very little dialogue and character interaction is shown, but I can say from a purely visual perspective I got a little J-horror feel. Not so much the long haired ghost stuff, but the crazier things like Suicide Club and Audition. It's hard to explain exactly what triggered that feeling, but I think it has something to do with the dynamic camera movement and muted sense that something's not right here.
I'm not all that familiar with the original Death Note material outside of the look of the demon behind the book, Ryuk. I can say without any reservation that casting Willem Dafoe as the demon's voice is going to pay off in spades, no matter how the rest of the movie turns out.
Check out the teaser below to see what I mean:
Lookin' good! Death Note bows on Netflix August 25th, which seems so far away. I'm used to seeing Netflix material, like, a month before they throw it up on the server. Between this and the Stranger Things Season 2 teaser I guess they're taking more of a long-lead approach these days.
What do you guys think?
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
