Adult thriller, not children's' folly

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2005)

At last! Now I know where to tell smug people to go when they moan about adults reading the Harry Potter series: the cinema! After the beautifully made third movie, I didn't think this one would live up to expectation. The trailer looked like it was stuffed with too many large scale, numbing effects; I thought that the warm, intimate feeling of the third film would be lost. But how wrong I was. I never thought I'd say it, but this film was even better than Alfonso Cuaron's.
The director, Mike Newell apparently said beforehand that that he was to shoot it like an adults' thriller. Harry Potter is no longer children's make-believe. It is a full throttle scary film. Key to this new found depth is the fact that Lord Voldemort is actually scary in this film! I was never that convinced by the scariness of He-Who-Shouldn't-Be-Named in the books (Sorry JK Rowling). But this film plunges to hidden depths of darkness, bringing JK Rowling's forth book to life magnificently. I was dumbfounded at the end of the experience and just thought "it's fantastic!" and it's very rare for one to watch a film without finding something to criticise.