Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

About 5 years ago a 20 year old version of me wrote a movie review, and he felt sad at the same time because he saw the last of Harry Potter movies or so he thought. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a fantasy film directed by David Yates. A spin-off prequel of the Harry Potter film series, the film was produced and written by J. K. Rowling, inspired by her book of the same name. The film stars Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander with Katherine Waterston, Ezra Miller, Ron Perlman and Colin Farrell. It is the ninth installment in J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World.

Eddie Redmayne has become one of my favorite actors, not because he was in some tent-pole movie, but because of his performances, the guy commits to the character, even if the director is making a fool out of him, case in point Jupiter Ascending. He portrays a character who is awkward socially, but is a huge hit among the Beasts hence is more comfortable around them. Ezra Miller, to be honest, I am not familiar with his work, all I know is that he is the flash in DCEU and The Perks of Being a Wallflower is on my watchlist, not because of him but Emma Watson.

Fantastic Beasts takes you back to the back to the Magical World of Harry Potter, but the world doesn't feel so familiar, it takes place 60-70 year before the events of the Harry Potter series and takes place in New York and the American Wizarding world is quite different, which brings an interesting new look into the Magical World.



The movie is quite different from what I expected it to be, there is a serious and dark tone to it, people are getting killed left and right. I expected it to be a little lighter in tone and just about, Finding the Beasts let loose by Newt, but it sets up the whole franchise in the first movie itself, there is a huge presence of Grindelwald (basically Voldemort of the series) which I didn't see coming.

Fantastic Beasts is a treat for Potter fans but also people who love fantasy movies, It doesn't require you to know all the lore of the Harry Potter movies you could just jump in and still get the Nectar Out of the Film.