We're not 100 per cent certain, but pretty confident that Death Note is the first panel at Comic-Con ever to have a demon dial in via Skype in midway through. “You know what, Adam?” said Ryuk, in the uniquely unsettling tones of Willem Dafoe. "I think we should show a scene from the movie. Then Dafoe unleashed a supremely creepy cackle. "I'll be seeing you all real soon..."
Adam Wingard’s high-concept chiller is the first Netflix film ever to get a Hall H panel at Comic-Con, and it got a rousing welcome. Based on the Japanese manga series of the same name, it’s the tale of a Seattle youngster Light Turner (Nat Wolff) who finds a powerful magical book: when he writes someone's name in it, that person dies. He starts to use it to rid the world of criminals, but quickly the situation gets out of hand. Well, duh — never seen a horror movie, Light? In the sequence shown at Comic-Con, Light meets Ryuk — think a terrifying cross between Groot and a porcupine, with glowing red eyes and an appetite for apples — and is tempted into writing a bully’s name in the diabolical tome. Cue some fun comedic business (Light screams like a girl), flying chairs and the line "some eight-foot-tall demon-looking motherfucker."
The footage cut off seemingly just before the bully’s grisly demise, prompting some hearty boos from the audience, but if we didn’t get a death, at least we got our money’s worth of note. The movie promises to have enough off-kilter scares to give anyone both the heebies and the jeebies, even if it’s heading straight to the small screen. When asked by an audience member what scares him, though, Wingard admitted it was something even more terrifying than a spiky-headed death god: "The President of the United States."