Film Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Part 4

I was anticipating this running to another week, but I managed to make some of the other posts slightly longer (mainly because of where the logical breaks fell) so this is the last review of Chamber of Secrets. Next wee I’ll go on to Prisoner of Azkaban which is likely to be just as long as this because I’ve devoted no less than 540 words to the end credits. I’m just that sad!

Before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to wrap up this film. In the last instalment the trio played with Polyjuice Potion, we took a trip down memory lane with Tom Riddle, Hermione got herself petrified and there were so many spiders, oh so many spiders!

99. Aw look, Harry and Ron are visiting Hermione with flowers. I can’t help but wonder whether being petrified would stop someone from aging. And if that’s the case, would Hermione kind of catch up with herself when she ended up doing double time with the help of the time turner next year?

100. They find a bit of paper which Hermione has apparently torn from a library book and written the word ‘pipes’ on. It must have been a desperate situation for Hermione to damage a book like that! At least they’ve established what the creature in the Chamber is (a Basilisk), how it’s getting around (the pipes) and why people have been petrified (its gaze kills you but no one’s looked it directly in the eyes).

101. Unfortunately this little bit of information comes just a little bit too late for them. Ginny Weasley’s been taken and a new note has been left telling everyone that ‘her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever’. Lockhart, a dick as ever, shows up late and is given the responsibility for going to save her.

102. Except he isn’t. The boys go to tell him what they know and find that he’s packing to leave. I wonder what his excuse for running away was going to be, surely he couldn’t have done a memory spell on all the Hogwarts staff when he left before even attempting to recover Ginny.

103. Unluckily for Lockhart, Harry and Ron pull their wands on him and escort him to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom to confirm their suspicions that she was the Basilisk’s last victim. Harry uses this information to find a tape with a snake on it, locating the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. And with a quick word of something snake-ish all the sinks sort of move out and forward revealing a tunnel down into the centre of the school.

104. Of course the best person to check the route for safety is Lockhart, especially as he tries to escape. I love his ‘it’s really quite filthy down here’ when he lands at the bottom as well as Myrtle’s offer to Harry that he can share her toilet if he dies. It’s the little things.

105. Lockhart wasn’t kidding when he said it was filthy. There’s bones and things everywhere. Crunchy.

106. Lockhart proves his worth as a big brave Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher here as he pretends to faint in order to steal Ron’s wand, then monologues before wiping his own memory and causing a rock slide. Handy guy to have around in an emergency really.

107. I do love memory wiped Lockhart. I wish they could’ve done the St Mungo’s bit in Order of the Phoenix because I would’ve loved to see him again after this. It’s one of my favourite parts of the book Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

108. This is where things really start feeling like what we’ve already seen before in the previous film. Harry has travelled down a under the school with his friend(s), and has now been separated, forced to go on and face Lord Voldemort by himself. I realise it’s just following the book but it just feels a bit repetitive.

109. Anyway. Harry learns why you shouldn’t just drop your wand anywhere. While Harry’s worrying about Ginny being cold and unconscious, Tom Riddle picks up the wand. We also get some flashbacks of Ginny with the diary. So we understand that she was in a trance the images get all sort of distorted. It was either that or making everything sort of cloudy.

110. I do like the anagram bit, especially the way the wand writes the fiery letters. Also I’ve never thought about it before but it’s like Harry saying he’s loyal to Dumbledore is what summons Fawkes with the Sorting Hat. That’s cool.

111. It’s quite lucky that when the Basilisk is summoned it goes straight after Harry, completely ignoring the unconscious and defenceless Ginny lying on the floor beside it. That would’ve been a bit unfortunate if Harry ran away while the snake thing stopped for a quite Weasley snack.

112. Aw, a rat! I wonder if it’s a friend of Scabbers…

113. There’s not really much else I can say about the Basilisk battle. I do worry when Harry starts climbing up the stone face, mainly because it doesn’t look like a very safe place to stand. Then again, it mostly works out okay for him, it’s just being a bit nervous of heights makes me feel twitchy about other people going up high.

114. The noises that the Basilisk makes when it gets stabbed in the mouth are kind of similar to the noises I make when I stab myself in the roof of the mouth with a cornflake. There’s no pain quite like it!

115. This version of Voldemort even kind of disappears like the one in the last film. Whereas the other one sort of disintegrated this one gets big glowing holes and then explodes into nothing. I guess that’s a Voldemort thing.

116. It’s quite impressive how easily Harry gives in to the prospect of dying at the age of just twelve. I guess it’s kind of setting him up for later in the series. All the same it’s lucky that Fawkes shows up just in time.

117. Love the bit where Fawkes flies them all up out of the tunnel. And Dumbledore’s response to the events where it sounds like he’s building up to expel them. I love Dumbledore’s sense of humour.

118. And apparently Harry’s loyalty to Dumbledore did summon Fawkes to Harry in the Chamber. Clearly I missed that on my last twenty or so viewings. I thought I was being all clever noticing it this time.

119. Voldemort transferred some of his powers to Harry the night he tried to kill him. That’s not all he did! I can’t help but think that this would’ve been the ideal opportunity for Dumbledore to start explaining the whole Horcrux thing to Harry… then again, maybe he was right to wait, he is only twelve after all.

120. Oh look, Dobby is the Malfoy’s House Elf. I like the way that everything sort of comes together in Dumbledore’s office at the end like this. The lighting is kind of funny on Lucius here, most of him is in shadow with the exception of his eyes. I’m not sure why that is, I mean, obviously it draws attention to his eyes but I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to see the rest of him as well!

121. Harry takes Tom Riddle’s diary to give to Malfoy who promptly hands it off to Dobby. Harry acted pretty quickly to get his shoe off, sock off and shoe back on before running down the corridor to catch Mr Malfoy. Today I was shopping for new shoes and you don’t know how hard it is to be balancing in a shop trying to whip your footwear off and on quickly. Perhaps he used magic.

122. We get to see Nearly Headless Nick, Filch stroking Mrs Norris and Colin Creevey as well as Hermione. Everything’s all back to normal. Actually isn’t this the last time we see Nick period?

123. Love. Love. LOVE the bit where Hermione and Ron are all awkward when he’s welcoming her back. It’s so cute.

124. I wonder what cancelling all the exams means for the OWL and NEWT students. Also, LOL at Hermione’s ‘oh no’ when Dumbledore announces that to applause from everyone else.

125. Ron apparently used the family owl to deliver Hagrid’s release papers. It sounds like the sort of thing Ron would do (rather than asking to borrow Hedwig or using a school owl) but what was the family owl doing at the school instead of being home with his parents who would presumably need to use Errol more often than the Weasley kids would. Whatever. Hagrid’s back and he gets standing ovation. Everyone’s pleased to see him back at the school with the exception of the Slytherins. Actually most of them are clapping too, apart from Malfoy and his cronies.

126. So with that we zoom out of the window and around Hogwarts. Everything goes dark, the music rises to a crescendo and that’s the end of the second film.


As I said, next week we’ll start what is easily one of my favourite films, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I had great fun watching it and although I tried to control myself it runs to almost 6000 words, so I’m going to be breaking it up for my sanity and your ease of reading. Or vice versa.