Voldemort: Origins of the Heir

It's not great, but it's a fan film! It's a load of fans with a tiny budget making something that they clearly love. If you go in knowing that and expecting that, you'll enjoy it.

I was genuinely excited when this fanfilm was announced and the trailer came out. I did not expect it to be particularly great, but I am always interested in Harry Potter Fan Culture.

This movie was a disappointment sadly. However, not for the reasons I thought it would be. When it comes to fanfilms on YouTube, I am used to ... no great camera work, no good lighting, no good special effects. This Fanfilm manages to do these things surprisingly well though. The camera work, the editing and the effects are not amazing but very solid, probably a result of the 15.000 Dollar Budget.

So, when people defend this fanfilm with the argument that it is Low Budget, they are really missing what went wrong here, because the flaws (for the most part) are not a result of the budget:

The writing is terrible.

The dialogue is often horrendous (it does not particularly get better with the very distracting dubbing in every scene) and the story itself is incredibly pointless. This does not add anything new, interesting or even a little bit creative to the Harry-Potter universe. The portrayal of Tom Riddle is not very well written here, it is sometimes even a very unnecessary contrast to his character in the books. The plot is not interesting. Should it even be called plot? In fact most of the runtime is just a very boring story (that we already know), told by bad dialogue, spoken by bad actors. Its not even an hour long but feels really bloated. There is a middle section, where they show a scene out of the books, which I really enjoyed, probably because it was left out in the official movies. You can tell, in this scene, that the writing comes from Rowling, because the characters and dialogue are suddenly very exciting and focused.

The rest is, to be really honest here, just not very good. The setting is... lame. The action does not feel like Harry-Potter to me. (its just coloured lightning bolts, no real curses) The plot is pointless, the twist in the end is laughably awful.

I know this is a fanfilm, I know its made as a free video for YouTube. And I appreciate the work that was put into this project. But that does not mean, that I cant criticise it. Like I said, most of the flaws are not a result of the budget. Its the writing, the acting and the storytelling.

I wish that people, who spend so much time and money in a fanfilm, would put more work, effort and love into the script.

If you have a good story, nobody cares if its low budget.

First of all, let me make it absolutely clear that Voldemort: Origins of the Heir is by all means a short film. With that in mind, it really shows how much dedicated fans can accomplish with a 15,000 euro budget and a runtime of less than an hour - with no motivation other than their love for the series.

The result is a minimalistic, dialogue-heavy film full of references to characters and events from the official Harry Potter movies/books. The inconsistencies are either too small or too few to matter, though hardcore fans might notice. It is essentially a small backstory made into a film. As such, it will probably appeal to longtime fans, but at the same time leave them wanting more, due to the film's short length.

The production values are surprisingly good for being a fan film. The special effects are nice and full of eye candy, certain sequences are really well edited, and the portrayal of Tom Riddle stands out.

It is a polished film with some memorable lines here and there. They really could have messed up on this one - and they didn't. If you are a fan of the Harry Potter series, go give it a watch. It's free (due to the non-commercial nature of the film), it doesn't stray too much from the canon, and, after all, it only lasts an hour.

The storyline of this movie was very poor. It is a series of flashbacks for most of the movie, and at the very end there is a "turn of events" right before the movie ends.

I only enjoyed the costumes, some of the camerawork (except those mouth shots when a character is speaking...) and some of the characters. Apart from that, a poor effort. I understand it's a fan movie, but writing a good storyline doesn't cost anything.

This short film can't be as good as a multimilion production, of course. but the special effects were ok. some questioning 1st person video-game type gamera work. Dialogues are overal poor and dubing's making everything terrible. some moments are terribly badly played, but the montage and interogation-room format is a clever idea to tell the story, with interesting final scenes that allow the viewer to rethink the previous scenes. The actor that played Tom was actually quite remarquable.