The darkness that began seeping into the Harry Potter series of films with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban continues to progressively deepen: never has the sense of menace felt as strong as it does in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The ancient halls of Hogwarts have never seemed so confining or so dangerous. The candles in the dining hall, which at one time seemed to magically hover almost in the skies overhead, now rest almost on top of the shoulders of the students. Voldemort has fully returned and his loyal Death Eaters rampage throughout Britain, and Harry Potter himself (Daniel Radcliffe) returns to a locked-down Hogwarts — which is under as much threat from within as it is from without.

Yet for all of the threat which lies barely underneath the surface of the film, Half-Blood Prince certainly feels much lighter in places than Order of the Phoenix ever did. While the newer film certainly has some of the scariest moments in the series yet, it’s balanced nicely by a frivolity the previous film lacked. That lightness, of course, comes largely thanks to the hormones bubbling over in most of the now firmly teenaged characters. With all of the big important goings-on happening around them — and knowing what’s coming up for them in the final two installments — it was a good thing for director David Yates to let the kids have some fun with the romance. Ron (Rupert Grint) in particular gets to provide some much-needed comic relief, a feat at which Grint has become quite adept over the last few years.

Personally, I enjoyed seeing Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright) — one of my favorite characters from the series — with a much bigger part in this film, more on par with the importance her character took on in the books; she seemed almost to be on an equal footing with Ron and Hermione this time out. Ginny seems worthy of Harry (though she and Radcliffe don’t exactly set the screen ablaze with their chemistry): Ginny’s someone who’s now proven repeatedly that she’s not afraid to risk her life to protect her family and friends. I’ll also admit that it certainly doesn’t hurt that Wright has turned into an absolutely stunning young woman.

The grown-ups in Half-Blood Prince don’t let the kids have all of the fun, of course. Alan Rickman has possibly his biggest part as Professor Severus Snape to date, and he makes the most of the opportunity, reveling in his character’s moral ambiguity (though perhaps not quite as much as I’d like; that’s a topic for another time). Series newcomer Jim Broadbent provides an astonishing performance as new Potions professor Horace Slughorn; I’ve seen a couple of critics indicate Broadbent could possibly be up for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work…if it weren’t in a Harry Potter film. I’ve finally started to warm up to Michael Gambon’s version of Dumbledore (or maybe I’ve simply gotten used to it), though he’s never exuded benevolent wisdom the way the late Richard Harris did, and that’s the one trait I most strongly identify with the character. Still, once I’m able to put my personal prejudices aside, I can admit that Gambon does a fine job in his most difficult outing with the character yet.

I can’t imagine someone seeing this movie without either having seen the previous five in the series or having read the books: there’s zero effort made to introduce viewers to any of the characters or situations. Characters are brought on-screen without any explanation of who they are or their relationships to anyone else; locations are shown without naming them; magical objects are used without explaining what they do; situations are referenced without context. For those viewers already well-immersed in the Potterverse, the shorthand works well, but Yates and returning screenwriter Steve Kloves had to sacrifice new-viewer friendliness in order to get even as much of the novel as they did in here; had they tried to hand-hold the uninitiated, the movie would have been six hours long.

Yates has set the series up for what I’m hoping/expecting will be a fantastic conclusion with the two-part Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. While I might not agree with all of the changes he and Kloves have made to the source material — and really, what Potter fan does? — I believe they’ve changed what they have in order to ensure those last two movies will end the story in an exciting and memorable fashion. I can’t wait.

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