Of all the deadly weapons we've seen on film and TV over the years, who'd have guessed a notebook could turn out to be one of the most dangerous?
A new clip for Netflix's Death Note shows the first encounter between Light (Nat Wolff), a young student, and Ryuk, a mischievous death god played by Willem Dafoe. With Ryuk's encouragement, Light decides to use his newfound power to cleanse the world of those he deems unworthy.
As you might guess, those semi-good intentions very quickly spiral out of control. "One thing I did when preparing for the film was make my own death note," said Wolff at the panel. "I thought, 'there's no way I was gonna be able to think of any names, because Light is such an evil sociopath."
"But as soon as I started writing, names started flying out," he continued. "It could definitely get out of hand easily, having that kind of power in anyone's hands."
Luckily, someone out there's trying to stop Light. As the body count piles up, Light's activities catch the attention of a brilliant detective known only as L (Keith Stanfield).
The cat-and-mouse game between Light and L is the meat of the movie, but director Adam Wingard hinted that the film branches out in a few different directions.
"It allowed me to do something that wasn't just pinned down by one genre," said Wingard. "This film encapsulates all genre in a lot of ways. It's mostly a thriller, but it's dramatic, there are romantic elements, horror stuff, even a musical moment, to a certain degree, in this film. It's the ultimate genre mashup."
Death Note hits Netflix August 25.
