The worst of the series

Rating: 3/10 (14 April 2020)

Just like its predecessor, Chamber of Secrets is an incoherent mess of a story, loosely woven together with implausible plot leaps. Rowling relies heavily on magic to cover her up her incredibly flimsy writing, randomly inserting illogical events to patch up the jumbled storyline.
It didn't seem possible, but Daniel Radcliffe actually manages to produce an even worse display of acting this time round. His performance is so incredibly wooden it's genuinely difficult to watch the scenes he's involved in. Rupert Grint's pantomime acting is equally painful, but it's Christian Coulsen who manages to scoop the accolade for absolute worst actor in this particular movie, with a truly atrocious portrayal of 'Tom Riddle'. Rowling also takes the cake when it comes to atrocious use of cryptology in a novel; the revealing of the Riddle's identity is so laughable it feels like satire.
And let's not forget the ridiculous runtime. How are children supposed to stay with this film? So much extraneous drivel that could have been excluded, so many pointless scenes. Thankfully, the series pick up from this point on but I can understand why many people would give up on the Harry Potter franchise after the first two offerings. Both the books and films are extremely weak.