Yes. A BIRD-EATING TREE. Man was I irritated. In Narnia the birds talk and the trees dance and Aslan appears to destroy the White Witch. And Tolkein's Ents would NEVER harm a bird. And here a cute little bluebird gets eaten - and it happens twice! Really, I wanted to puke on the punkish teenage boys in the row in front of me. Who were making derisory comments in any case, but 'Duplex' and 'The Day after Tomorrow' were sold out (thank heaven), so my friends said, Ag, it's fine, it's a kiddy movie. It was a bird-eating tree. I'm looking for a cutprice chainsaw and enough diesel to kill a whole forest.

People tend to accept anything that gets served to them in a cute package with a bow tied around it. They don't care that there's a squished frog in there with stinky tartare sauce. What am I on about? I've seen creepy movies before, like Sleepy Hollow, and I find that most movies have a compulsive desire to mess with people's heads. Everybody's been fighting on both sides of the debate: Harry Potter is Deadly Evil and You'll Be Defiled if You Watch It vs Harry Potter Is Fun - Lets Go Buy A Wand! Both sides are slightly screwy, in my opinion. Having accidentally gone to see it myself, I found I was watching it on two levels: physical, cute and humorous, and dark and spiritual and icky. Not a good combination, as the humour was used as a distraction from the dodgy stuff. I think the bird-eating tree eating the bluebird was supposed to be humorous, but I just felt sick. The woman who was supposed to teach "The Noble Art of Divination" was bumbly and funny and harmless, until an evil demonic voice took her over and made her prophesy bad things to scare Harry.

I was not happy. Satanism is actually legal in South Africa - Freedom of Religion bites itself on the bum again - but the grave-desecrations, ritual murders and animal cruelty isn't. (Let's just say the SPCA doesn't allow black cats to be adopted before Halloween...). I love cats. I love any animal that isn't trying to eat me, although a tiger stalked me at the zoo once (through an electric fence) and I can't describe the sensations that went down my spine, the instincts that screamed at me: Don't run! It'll jump on you. Don't Move!. (Tigers don't like to attack from the front, which is why people in Indian forests wear big stary-eyed masks on the backs of their heads. Very clever). It was a hand-reared tiger, and as soon as I said fffffffrrrrrrttttt, which is 'hullo, don't eat me' in tiger, it relaxed and wanted to play. But I realise that even if a big cat were trying to eat me I'd still be going 'Oh you're so cute! all that beautiful fur. Puddy tat! What beautiful teeth you haaaargh'.

A friend of mine went through a hairy time of being in Spiritual Services (a volunteer satanism-fighting arm of the Police Reservists), and I wouldn't let him tell me about the stuff he saw - I'm not that much of a voyeur. (A dead girl about my age lying on the ground with her own uterus in her hand. I told him not to tell me anything else. It was too horrible). To me, witchcraft isn't a joke, and it's not for kiddies. Encouraging children to get involved in the occult isn't clever. Most Wiccans have no idea what they're playing with, poncing around the fire "skyclad" (ie buck-naked and freezing their nadgers off - it's a small range of mountains on the Discworld) and trying to tell children that the occult is basically harmless and fun, is like saying that poison is okay if you drink it in small doses out of a cute cartoony bottle.

All that said, it was a very good movie as movies go. The effects were excellent, and there were about four twists that I counted. I like a movie with an actual plot. I can only wish that the movie's magic was more of the bibbity-bobbity-boo sort. I don't think I'd take a child younger than thirteen to see it. The 'Dementors' were horrible - slightly worse than Black Riders, and they have this whole soul-stealing thing going, which I found rather aggravated my paranoia. Maybe they were lawyers when they were alive. On one level, they were people with black stocking material draped over their heads, but on another, they had bloody mouths like the sand-worms of Dune and hands like dead frosted vulture claws. And they were supposed to be on the side of Good? Weird.

Harry seemed to spend a lot of the movie shouting "Expecting Petroleum!". (Does he know something about OPEC that we don't?) "Light" doesn't exactly mean 'good' in the Biblical sense, either, people. 'Lucifer' means "Light" - the devil appears as an angel of light. We can be seduced by beauty. Don't look at the outside. Ignore the giftwrap. See what's really there. We refer to 'a tree and it's fruit'. It's a parable Jesus told. Fig trees can't produce thorns, and thorn trees can't produce good nutritious figs. "You will know them by their fruit", means that you can see what kind of a person people are by what they say and do. A bad tree can't produce good fruit, and a good tree can't produce bad fruit. A good man brings good things out of his treasure of good things; an evil man brings evil things out of his treasure of evil things. Where your treasure is, is where your heart is also. Be careful what you venerate.

Alan Rickman (Snape) and David Thewlis (Lupine) were brilliant. My favourite Alan Rickman role is definitely a toss-up between Dr Lazarus in "Galaxy Quest" ("Where are you going?" Alan: "To see if there's a PUB!") and the Sheriff of Nottingham in "Prince of Thieves" (Alan: "I'll disembowel him with a spoon!" "Why a spoon, cousin?" Alan: "Because it's blunt, you idiot, it'll HURT more!" 'Nuff said). The sight of David Thewlis reminds me too much of "Love and Eternity", the movie wherein David spends altogether too much time being bonked by Leonardo DiCaprio. I dunno what it was called in the U.S. Yes, I saw David Thewlis naked from the front. I'm traumatised. He was just too, er, wrinkly. Sies! In retrospect, I shouldn't have watched that movie.

The Hogwarts animals were really cute. However, keeping a real owl is a lot of work, so don't get one for your kid. There'll be bits of half-decomposing mice everywhere, and owl poo in your cupboards and on your settees and sideboards. There might even be owl vomit. Animals are only slightly less work than children, and unless you're prepared to learn real falconry and carry a heavy bird around on your fist, avoiding the occasional bite, it's not a good idea. Unscrupulous people catch them in the wild and mistreat them and don't feed them properly. Take your kids to an owl sanctuary or visit a trained falconer, but be environmentally-conscious and responsible, and explain that wild animals need proper care and handling. If they're still interested, get them a volunteer position at a falconry club, and stop endangering Arctic owls! They're a protected species, or so I presume.

Finally, I come to one of my favourite themes: the seductive beauty of evil. It would seem that the actual Antichrist will be extremely beautiful, charming, and with a great personality, and yet with a heart of deepest, vilest malevolence. Humour is another cover for evil: most people focus on the humour and ignore the darker bits... why not ignore the humour and focus on the dark bits? Nothing that is in darkness will not be brought into the light. God said, I will visit the iniquity of the fathers onto the children, to the third or fourth generation of those that hate me. And what is "iniquity?" Well, there are three words for wrongdoing in the Bible: "sin", which refers to a falling short of God's perfection, and merely describes the human condition (as in "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus"); "transgression", which means to overstep the bounds of what is right; and "iniquity", which refers to deliberate, open, flagrant rebellion against God. There is a sense of deliberately shaking one's fist in God's face.

So what counts as iniquity? Pride, for one thing. Pride and rebellion go together, in fact. And I mean real, offensive, hubristic pride - the sort the ancient Greeks thought would earn you a lightning-bolt from Olympus. And then, of course, there is witchcraft. Witchcraft is an attempt by one person to manipulate another, whether in their will, their emotions, etc. "Magic" is defined anthropologically (Yes, I did Anthro 1. It was enlightening.) - as opposed to worship - as an attempt to manipulate and control forces such as those of nature, spiritual forces (including, yes, demons), and deities. Therefore, practising magic in the real world, is an attempt to control God (as in the New Age dogma, that prayer is "coercing God" - can you see the God of Sinai, the One who took a shortcut across the Sea of Galilee by walking on it, being "coerced"? Hah.)

There was this time when Elijah was sitting out on this mountain (he seemed to do that a lot) and the king of somewhere-or-other sends an obnoxious officer and some men to fetch him. The officer marches up and shouts something (obnoxiously) at Elijah. Now, Elijah had probably had a hard day. (Not a bad hair day, of course, because we know from elsewhere in Kings that he was bald). Here comes an idiot with no chin and bunny teeth who seems to have cornered the market in being a bastard. Elijah called fire down from heaven, and obliterated him and his men. BAM! No more soldiers. Not that I'm excusing what Elijah did, because the Bible says You Shall Not Murder, but if that's what a ratty old prophet who'd probably had locusts for lunch could do on an off day, what's God gonna do? Urk.

Funny thing is, God isn't the sort to hurl lightning bolts and fire and stuff. He did it a lot, say, in the first five books (the Torah), but lately He's shown His forgiving side - and He isn't willing that anyone should die, but that all might come to salvation. When the disciples, after Jesus had been thrown out of a town, said "Can we call down fire from heaven? Huh, can we, can we?!" Jesus basically told them to grow up. (He did it in a very nice and polite way of course, because God is never impolite - He knows when He's not wanted, and won't ever break a door down, for example...).

But God is very firm about witchcraft. "Rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft" makes His views very clear. There was also something about not allowing a sorceress to live, so there goes "masters of the universe" cartoons, I suppose. If witchcraft is a sin, and that sin is iniquity, then there is a curse on witchcraft. That's the bit about "visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children". It sounds harsh, but four generations were usually a family unit living in a house in the Middle East. "Curses" in the Biblical sense are consequences more than anything else, and if the parents in a household participate in something dodgy, then their children will usually follow suit. There is also a "curse", or punishment, in a sense, on objects of worship, like idols for example, that God has condemned. So get them out of your house - burn 'em, for preference. Witchcraft or sorcerous objects, like tarot cards, oija boards, acupucture needles, etc, are also not a good thing to own. Get rid of them. Your kids'll stop having nightmares, for a start. If you can't get rid of them, ask a pastor or minister to get rid of them for you.

So is this movie cursed, you ask, with huge eyes...? No, not exactly. It is icky, though. But the curse is on the willful disobedience, the magic, the attitude or world-view of total disregard or hatred of God. Harry shows hints of this world-view by his actions: he flouts regulations, and does things by sneaky or dishonest means, even though he's trying to do "good". The authority, Bumblebore I think his name was, actively abets lawbreaking. Yes they were stupid rules and laws, but as Christians we are called to submit to the governing authorities, and the fact that this letter was written by Paul in the time of Nero, the insane megalomaniac who used us as human torches at banquets, tells you God is serious about this. Rebellion against authority is like the sin of witchcraft, so we shouldn't do it, especially not within our own churches. But I digress. Stay away from this movie, I would advise. It has nasty overtones.

And finally: (Deuteronomy 18: 9-15)

When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there.
Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire (or "who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire" [footnoted]), who practises divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.
Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you.
You must be blameless before the LORD your God.

The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practise sorcery or divination. But as for you, the LORD your God has not permitted you to do so.
The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me [Moses] from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.
For this is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb [Sinai] on the day of the assembly when you said, "Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God, nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die."