When Harry Potter Meets SCARY

At last it can be told: despite the $900 million it made at the global box office, despite its ranking as the highest-grossing film of 2001, director Chris Columbus was not entirely happy with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. "I always thought we could have gotten the visual effects better," he says. The pacing of the film, he admits, was a bit sluggish. "The first 40 minutes of the first Harry Potter film were introductions."

On Nov. 15, when the bespectacled wizard returns in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, based on the second novel in J.K. Rowling's blockbuster series, fans will see a bolder, more menacing, faster-paced movie--and to put it bluntly, a better one. "It's more of everything," says Daniel Radcliffe, 13, who once again plays Harry with brainy subtlety (but whose voice has dropped a good octave). "And it's a lot darker."

It is also much scarier. The movie mirrors the progress of Rowling's books, which become more sinister and intense as they go along. In the new film, a dead cat is hung in a hallway at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; children are frozen stiff (or "petrified") by a monster; Harry and his sidekick Ron (Rupert Grint) are attacked with surprising violence by a monstrous Whomping Willow after crash-landing in its gnarled branches in a flying car. Later, they're chased through the Forbidden Forest by an army of giant spiders.

Warner Bros. was afraid that the movie would receive a PG-13 rating--a dangerous proposition, since Potter's most devoted fans are preteens. Just as important, the core consumers for Potter toys, which generated about $500 million in sales last time around, range in age from 7 to 11. Instead, the film is conveniently PG, like its predecessor.

Still, the filmmakers are eager to let you know that your children may be afraid, very afraid. "I would strongly caution parents," says Columbus, "anyone who has a 7-year-old or younger, to make sure they know what they're getting into."

His warning is the cinematic equivalent of a parental advisory on music, a not entirely unintentional come-on to older teens and young adults who thought the last Potter film skewed too young. In the posters for Chamber of Secrets, Harry looks intense, and he's holding a sword. It's an image designed to appeal to older audiences, the same moviegoers who embraced the other movie franchise launched a year ago, Lord of the Rings.

The competition between Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter--the sibling rivals of the AOL Time Warner entertainment family--is intense. Last year's Fellowship of the Ring, the first of three J.R.R. Tolkien--based movies to be released by the company's New Line division, came in second at the box office behind Harry Potter. Unlike Potter, however, it ended up on numerous critics' best-of-the-year lists and received 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. (The Sorcerer's Stone received only three.)