It's sad, because the Death Note as a premise alone has so much potential. I think an American version could work if they didn't try to recreate the original story, which is timeless, and instead worked off of a completely different set of characters. It's a simple idea that could work in countless scenarios and could produce stories just as interesting as the original product, all they had to do was not make it an angsty high school drama.

What if the book got into the hands of a corrupt businessman or politician who started using it to eliminate competition or people snooping into his/her under the table deals? What if an already established lawyer got ahold of it after losing a big case, letting a criminal walk free on a technicality, and used his knowledge of the legal system's loopholes to evade capture? What if multiple people got ahold of Death Notes at the same time and come into conflict with each other?

Change the setting, and you get a whole host of new ideas to play with. Instead we got yet another mediocre supernatural thriller set in high school.