Killing by writing

I’ll just mention this in passing that a Japanese movie that originally aired nearly two years ago was released to movie theaters here in America yesterday.

And then it may have been pulled from theaters. On purpose.

Don’t ask me how that’s considered marketing, but apparently this passes for viral marketing, because here I am talking about it.

Here’s the plot of this story: A young student who hates crime and corruption happens to find a notebook that was lost by the God of Death. Yeah, not exactly the God I would choose to pray to, but stay with me here… Anyone’s name that is written in this notebook will die (within 24 hours). Usually by heart attack if you don’t specify the method of death, but you can get creative. Hating crime, our story’s protagonist then starts killing off criminal types by writing their names down in the notebook, or Death Note as the notebook and the paper from that notebook is called. The cops are then called in, and of course, if anyone gets close, our protagonist has him die, too, because of that pesky name issue. Find out who’s following you, write their name down, BAM! They’re dead. Eventually, the police put someone on the case that doesn’t go by his own name. Just by a letter — “L”. And then it’s cat and mouse for the rest of the story.

I watched the amine on this sometime back (Thanks, Netflix!) and thought it was quite good in sections, simply because of the learning the ins and outs of killing people with ink on paper.

Anyway, if you have some time and you see this movie DEATH NOTE, grab your significant other and go watch this. I haven’t seen this live action version of the amine story, but it should be quite fun.

Official Movie Site for DEATH NOTE (flash interface)