With movie snacks in one hand and my ticket stub in the other, I moved with nervous excitement to find my group of friends in the darkened theatre. My hands were shaking, and I couldn’t tell if it was from anticipation of the movie to come, or from the blue raspberry ICEE I was holding. I, along with hundreds of other Harry Potter fans, had arrived hours early to find good seats for the midnight premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One. It was well worth my time to be among the first to see the beginning of the end of a series I have enjoyed since elementary school days.

The movie was an emotional rollercoaster for the avid fan, and from the very beginning, I was victim to the strange sensation of laughing and crying at the same time. While the seventh installment of the Harry Potter series is the darkest book, and now, movie, by far, the movie manages to keep a quirky sense of humor that beautifully reflects the attitude of the former films and the writing style of author J.K. Rowling herself.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One” focuses on friends Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliff), Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ronald Weasley’s (Rupert Grint) hunt for Voldemort’s Horcruxes, objects, which once destroyed, will aid Harry in confronting Voldemort for the last time. This movie is different from all of the others in that Harry, Ron, and Hermione never return to Hogwarts. They instead spend all of their time travelling in what could be assumed to be the English countryside, searching out for Horcruxes and avoiding attacks from Voldemort’s followers.

This movie combines the brilliant filming of director David Yates with the exceptional scoring of Alexandre Desplat to make for one of the best films of the series thus far. Newcomers to the books or movies may have trouble following some of the plot, but overall, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One” is a wonderful movie that everybody can enjoy during the holiday season.