That being said, let's kick things off with my opinion and review of the newest of these live action adaptations with Netflix's attempt at the Death Note franchise.
There are several things I want to touch on in my review but we will start with:
Characters
Light: Well here is an important character to nail as Light is the main protagonist (or antagonist depending on outlook) of the entire series. I don't like this version of the character maybe because it ruined him unlike the choices made for L or any other character. They turned Light into something of an emo-kid, someone incapable of good decisions like not considering cheating a bad thing, when the actual Light is an ace-student and a "model" good all-around person except the whole mass-murderer God-complex thing he has. It has a bit to do with the bastardization of the source material by turning him from Light Yagami to Light Turner. Every bit of the quiet, collected Light, the one who always follows through on his plans to create the utopia he dreams for are gone. He becomes, to quote Mia in the movie, "a pussy". That isn't something the actual character ever does and strays too far from his actual anime/manga version for me to consider it a good version of Light.
L: The other most important character to nail is L, the opposite to Light, the yin to his yang, and the brains behind the attempt to catch "Kira" (Light's persona). Let's get it out of the way now, a lot of people hate the idea of an African American L, and while I do picture more of the traditional pale looking/absolutely dead tired version that the anime presents since the whole thing is a bastarized American version of the series I've got no gripes with the casting choice. The portrayal of L was spot on and though a bit of dialogue was iffy, he was good. My only issue was that they made him out to be such a good detective that he discovered that Kira was Light much too quickly.
Mia: She is less obsessed with Light this time around and moreso with just being a part of "Kira" and that makes her much different than the original character. Though a LARGE part of Mia's character is gone and defeated with her not possessing her own Death Note with her corresponding shinigami Rem. In the anime she kills people while Light is under investigation with her own Death Note before finding out that he is the original Kira thus beginning her infatuation with him. The "I'm a cheerleader but sure nerd I'll believe your crazy death book thing, follow your cause, and start banging you cuz I want to kill people too" is OK for the movie purpose alone but without Mia's own Death Note/Rem a lot of her true character is gone.
Ryuk: Willem DeFoe is amazing at anything creepy, it's his personality, he's an infectious and charismatic individual. A great actor capable of a solid performance in almost any role and he brings Ryuk to life properly. When I heard they cast a live action Death Note movie I looked and saw the entire cast and went, "uggggg" except for the choice of DeFoe. "If anyone can pull off Ryuk it is him," and he did and did perfectly. Granted there are a few issues because Ryuk is a much more passive character, relatively, and doesn't come across as sinister in the show but the movie shows him as a being that always has ulterior motives. The CG used to make the actual character was done well too, they managed to find a way to make it not too cartoon and not too realistic, it was done well. Ryuk was a general bright spot in the movie for sure.
Everyone Else: Just to give a general overview of the other characters Watari was done well, granted a little younger casting wise but that's ok they entire cast was "unique". Light's father still being a police officer and someone trying to stop Kira was there and he was both well cast and well played.
Setting & Plot
I'm just going to get out of the way that Westernizing the movie and having everything take place in Seattle just takes too much away from the source material. When people complain about whitewashing Asian roles in movies like Ghost In The Shell, re-working an entire movie that should be set in the Kanto region of Japan just to fit non-Asian roles in makes absolutely no sense. I didn't like a Westernized setting because it created one big issue. It made it into a cliche-ridden cheese looking American "horror" movie like Final Destination. If I wanted a movie like that I'd watch one of the billion Final Destination or other garbage American "horror" movies. They did try to stay relatively faithful to the plot of the show but omitting big things like Mia's Death Note, not making Light an investigator in the Kira task force, not having both Light and Mia lose their Death Notes and thus their memories of everything they have done as well as their memory of their shinigami companions Ryuk & Remi, not including things like that was a HUGE mistake. I know it sounds like a lot to include in an hour and a half long movie but I think if they decided to do it properly and not draw out a few scenes that they could've lengthened the movie by a half hour and fit it all in.
Final Thoughts
To put things to rest, if it were just a "horror" movie, it would be an okay film because all I saw while watching it was another cheap sequel to Final Destination. As an anime adaptation, attaching itself to Death Note, it missed the mark on a lot of key points of the anime/manga and missed a lot of opportunities to make the movie more faithful to the source material. Like every single live action anime ever.
So all things considered as a Final Destination movie it was good as a Death Note movie it missed several parts of the source material and it had potential but fell flat trying to do too much at once.