Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Review: The Great Comeback

⚗️ Introduction

⚡ This film is part of the Harry Potter Master Hub – our complete guide to watching and reading the whole Wizarding World in order, with every film, book and LEGO set reviewed.

After the weakest entry in the series, my wife and I hit play on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) with lowered expectations — and got the biggest, most pleasant surprise of the whole rewatch. This is the film where everything clicks back into place. It’s beautiful, it’s genuinely funny, it’s achingly romantic, and it builds to one of the most devastating endings in the entire saga. It is, for us, the second-best film in the series — the great comeback that returns to the heights of Prisoner of Azkaban.

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For the Dadnology community, this is a confident, glowing 9/10. David Yates, uneven on the fifth film, is fully in command here — you can feel a director who now understands exactly what this series is and how to shoot it. The genius of the sixth film is its patience: it’s the calm before the storm, the last year of something like a normal life at Hogwarts, and it uses that quiet to make the eventual gut-punch land twice as hard. It’s the most grown-up film in the series that still remembers how to laugh.

The sixth film understood something the fifth didn’t: you earn a devastating ending by first making the audience comfortable, warm and happy. So it spends its middle hour on crushes and Quidditch and jealousy — and then it takes it all away.

Narrative Architecture: The Calm Before the War

The emotional engine of Half-Blood Prince is dread wrapped in warmth. On the surface, it’s the most relaxed film in years — the trio are sixteen, hormones are running wild, and half the film is a wonderfully funny comedy of teenage romance: Ron’s oblivious popularity, Hermione’s heartbreak, Harry and Ginny’s slow-burn, and a love potion or two gone wrong. It’s the lightest the series has felt since the early days, and it’s a joy.

But underneath, the film is doing something deadly serious: assembling the case against Voldemort. Dumbledore takes Harry on a journey through memories to understand how Tom Riddle became the Dark Lord — the poverty, the cruelty, the obsession with immortality, and the terrible secret of the Horcruxes. It’s the film that finally makes Voldemort comprehensible, and therefore more frightening. Evil, the sixth film argues, isn’t born; it’s chosen, one cruelty at a time. For a dad, it’s a surprisingly rich text on where darkness comes from.

The parallel tragedy is Draco Malfoy. Given a real, dangerous task by Voldemort, Tom Felton finally gets to play Draco as a terrified, in-over-his-head boy rather than a cartoon bully — a kid crushed by a burden no teenager should carry. It’s the most human the character ever gets, and it sets up the film’s shattering climax: the astronomy tower, Dumbledore’s death at Snape’s hand, and the quiet, wind-blown horror of it all. The series has killed before, but never anyone this central, and never this coldly.

Jim Broadbent’s Horace Slughorn is the film’s secret weapon — a vain, sad, decent old man hiding a shameful secret, and the human key to the whole Horcrux mystery. It’s a genuinely great performance in a series full of them, and proof that the sixth film cared about its characters as much as its plot.

Craft & Direction: Yates in Full Command

This is the best-looking Harry Potter film since Cuarón’s, and it’s no accident. Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel drenches Hogwarts in silvery, desaturated light, turning the castle into something dreamlike and melancholy — a place already half-mourning what’s coming. The famous cave sequence, all green fire and black water and Dumbledore’s terrible thirst, is the most purely cinematic set-piece in the back half of the saga.

Three things make the sixth film soar:

1. The tonal control: Yates juggles broad teenage comedy and creeping dread in the same film without either undercutting the other — a genuinely hard trick.
2. The cinematography: Delbonnel’s silvery palette makes this the most beautiful entry since Azkaban, and one of the best-shot blockbusters of its year.
3. The ending: the astronomy tower finale, played almost without music, is a masterclass in restraint — the loudest emotional moment in the series delivered in near-silence.

If there’s a criticism, it’s that the film’s confidence in its own quiet means the plot mechanics get a little loose — the film is happy to skip an action beat the book included (the Burrow’s climactic battle is invented for the film; the final battle at Hogwarts is deferred). But these are choices, not failures. The sixth film knows exactly what it’s doing, and what it’s doing is grief.

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Potions are the engine of the sixth film — Slughorn’s classroom, the luck potion, and the mysterious annotated textbook that gives the film its name — which makes the LEGO Potions Classroom (76464) the perfect companion build. The Weasley home also takes centre stage this year, and the gloriously wonky LEGO The Burrow – Collectors’ Edition (76437) is one of the finest sets in the whole theme.

The Family Rewatch: The Quiet Masterpiece

For a family marathon, the sixth film is a lovely change of pace — it’s less frightening in the monster sense than Goblet of Fire, with far more romance and comedy, which makes its middle stretch surprisingly gentle. The scares here are emotional, not visual: it’s the sadness that lands hard, particularly the tower finale. That makes it a 10-and-up film not because it’s violent, but because it’s heavy.

On our rewatch, this was the film that most rewarded adult eyes. As a kid you remember the love potions and the Quidditch; as a dad you feel the whole thing as a slow, dignified march toward loss, and Slughorn’s guilt and Draco’s terror hit completely differently. It’s also the film I’d point to for anyone who thinks the later Potter films are just wall-to-wall CGI wizard battles — Half-Blood Prince is patient, character-driven, and quietly devastating. It’s the series at its most mature, and its second-best.

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Is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a good film?

It’s excellent — for us, the second-best in the whole series, and the point where the films return to the heights of Prisoner of Azkaban. Beautiful, funny, romantic and devastating. We rate it 9/10.

Why is Half-Blood Prince considered a comeback?

After the uneven fifth film, David Yates finds his footing completely. The sixth film is gorgeously shot, tonally confident, and balances teenage romance with real dread and one of the saga’s most shattering endings.

Who directed Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?

David Yates, his second of five consecutive films. Where Order of the Phoenix felt like him finding his feet, Half-Blood Prince is him fully in command of the series.

Is Half-Blood Prince suitable for kids?

It’s rated PG and has less action than most entries, but the emotional weight is heavy — the cave sequence and the tower finale are intense. Best for around 10 and up; the sadness lands harder than any monster.

Why does the sixth film focus so much on romance?

By design. Half-Blood Prince is the calm before the storm — the last year of something like normal life at Hogwarts. The teenage romance grounds the characters before the war of the final two films tears everything apart.