'Deathly Hallows' ratchets up fear, tension

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is the best entry in the franchise since the fourth, The Goblet of Fire. That film was fashioned as a straight-ahead, old-fashioned thriller; this new one pushes things even further, into the realm of pure horror. Ears are cut off, wizened old ladies are transformed into man-eating pythons, and our young heroes race across an increasingly barren landscape, as the existential panic mounts all around them.

Directed by David Yates, who made the previous two Potter pictures, Deathly Hallows is one of two movies based on the final volume in J.K. Rowling's boy wizard series. ( Part 2 will be released in July.) That puts a lot of pressure on screenwriter Steve Kloves, who has to incorporate a great deal of exposition and setup, most of which won't get paid off for another seven months. Yet Deathly Hallows succeeds as a self-contained work, mainly because Yates and Kloves have done such an effective job creating and sustaining the grim mood. Even if you can't follow all the beats in the story -- and unless you are utterly steeped in Potter-iana, some of the talk is going to sail over your head -- you still find yourself pulled along by the film's urgent, unnerving momentum.

The film begins, appropriately enough, in almost complete darkness -- indeed, for much of the first 30 minutes, cinematographer Eduardo Serra turns down the light so low you sometimes need to squint to make out what's happening. Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has now taken corporeal form, and is determined to capture Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) before he can be moved to a safe house. The Order of the Phoenix, the body charged with protecting him, develops what should be a foolproof plan to keep the young wizard safe -- but they are viciously attacked midflight. This excellent opening passage sets the stage for much of what follows, with long, quietly tense dialogue scenes giving way to bursts of bloody, gangster movie-style violence.

In quick succession, the Ministry of Magic collapses, and a new regime -- determined to stamp out "Mudbloods," the half-human, half-wizards among them -- is established. The Order of the Phoenix is sent underground. Harry and his two closest friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), are forced into hiding. For all the story's plot and scale, though, the marvel of Deathly Hallows is that it maintains such careful focus on the three central characters, who must figure out how to destroy the remaining pieces of Voldemort's soul that are scattered around the wizarding world. (Seriously, if you don't already know your Potter, this is not the movie to start with.)

Exile and ethnic cleansing don't sound like appropriate themes for a children's movie, but Deathly Hallows isn't a children's film at all. Yates has stripped away all vestiges of kids' stuff that adorned the earlier pictures, those strangely flavored jellybeans and wandering ghosts who provided comic relief. What he locates at the core of Rowling's story is something much more poignant and powerful: the overwhelming fear of a trio of adolescents reckoning with an adult world turned upside down, and the heartbreaking sadness of one young man who keeps watching others being sacrificed on his behalf.

Deathly Hallows requires a little more patience than most of the previous Potter pictures, especially in the long middle section, which finds Harry, Ron and Hermione traveling the English countryside, struggling with a locket that has the power to alter their personalities. The movie is also hamstrung by a climactic rescue from a character who literally emerges out of nowhere -- a cheat that was in Rowling's novel, and that lamely gets repeated here.

But Yates also manages to find new ways to surprise us, which isn't easy seven films into a big-budget franchise. Three-quarters of the way along, we learn the story of the Deathly Hallows, three brothers who once cheated Death, and for a few elastic, eye-popping moments, the film shifts into animation. (This sequence, supervised by Ben Hibon, might just be the single best thing in all seven films.) In a series now crowded with dozens of well-known actors, Yates also makes room for a few of the supporting actors to shine. Helena Bonham Carter, especially, needs only two scenes to give her Bellatrix Lestrange an epically unhinged majesty.

The fourth film, for all its high-powered thrills, never lost sight of the fact that it was a story of teenagers hurtling too fast into adulthood. By the same token, what makes Deathly Hallows so affecting is that, beyond the special effects and mythological mumbo-jumbo, this is a film grounded in ordinary, painful emotion. Watch out for a brief bit in which Harry grabs Hermione and forces her to dance, in a bid to take her mind off their worries. As the hand-held camera zooms in to follow them, with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' O Children playing on the soundtrack -- an anachronistic touch that nonetheless feels perfectly judged -- these two deeply anxious souls get to be kids, for just a few fleeting moments.

Then the music stops. And the panic starts all over again.