Death Note: Light Up The New World

THE main concept of this franchise is simple: shinigami (death spirits) tempt mortals by giving them enchanted notebooks. Write down someone’s name, time and cause of death while thinking of that person’s face, and it all comes true. Straightforward, right? So it’s baffling why this sequel/update to the two 2006 Death Note movies is so mind-numbingly overplotted.

In those films, an ordinary guy named Light used his Death Note(book) to kill criminals, becoming the super serial killer known as Kira. Eccentric, brilliant private detective “L” ended Kira’s run at the cost of his own life. Now, 10 years later, a new Kira – or Neo-Kira – is writing names and killing scumbags, and a new task force comprising the world’s worst trackers, sloppiest investigators and a truly annoying “successor” to L is put on the case.

On the plus side, we do get a couple of interesting new characters, notably a cyberterrorist who idolises the original Kira and a female shinigami named Arma, who is simply ... fascinating.

Too bad that the movie relies on the ridiculous overuse of clever ideas from the first two films, and colossal organisational incompetence on the part of the authorities, to move the plot along and set up the inevitable sequel. There are deeper themes of regret and redemption here, but these are lost amid the rapid-fire plot twists – mostly arbitrary and hardly logical – as the mystery of Neo-Kira’s identity is unravelled.