Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald Review - 5 Ups & 7 Downs

4. The Tone Is More Miserable Than Fun

Not even the darker Harry Potter movies felt quite this relentlessly miserable and self-serious. Yes, there are cute moments and goofy one-liners on occasion, but for the most part The Crimes of Grindelwald is a surprisingly depressing slog.

In the first act alone, there's a "romantic" subplot which raises questions of consent and effectively implies that one character has been committing rape-by-deception, while some of the more brutal deaths in the movie feel like misguided shock value and little else.

A mere two movies into a five-film franchise, should things feel quite so dire and helpless? Probably not, and though the Potter movies certainly weren't afraid to dabble in darkness, that sense of wonder and lightness was always still there. In this film, not so much.