Death Note: Netflix under fire over Belgium train crash images

Netflix has come under fire for images used in the film Death Note said to be taken from a deadly train crash in Belgium in 2010, local media report.

A scene in the film, a horror inspired by a Japanese manga series, reportedly uses shots of a crash involving two passenger trains that killed 19 people.

A Belgian railway spokesman said it showed “little respect” to the victims.

Netflix is yet to comment on the reports. It is not clear if filmmakers had permission to use the images.

A spokesman for the Belgian rail operator SNCB, Dimitri Temmerman, said the company had not been informed of any decision to include the images for the film produced for the streaming service provider.

He described the reported appearance of the aerial footage, used to illustrate an unrelated incident in the film, as “a shock”, Belgium’s VRT News reported.

Mr Temmerman added that he was looking at an appropriate response.

One survivor of the crash, 60-year-old Anita Mahy, told daily newspaper De Standaard that the decision to include images of the deadly collision amounted to a “complete lack of respect for all those involved”.

“You’ll just sit and watch an evening movie unsuspectingly and then face the accident again,” she said, adding: “It makes me furious.”

The Belgian train accident in February 2010 happened during the morning rush-hour commute.

The two trains collided head-on, at Halle, south-west of Brussels, causing carriages to compact, after one of them reportedly missed a stop signal.

The Netflix film Death Note was released last summer, but its reported use of these controversial images has only recently emerged.

The first foreboding minute of Death Note. Now streaming. pic.twitter.com/uSt3Heq7UW

— Netflix US (@netflix) August 25, 2017

Source: bbc.com