HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (2002). Despite its inventive use of an old diary as a vehicle for time travel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, with such horror-movie standards as giant spiders and a serpent in the plumbing, is the weakest of the Harry Potter novels so far. But director Chris Columbus has made a darker, quicker movie of it than he did of The Sorcerer's Stone, with particularly fine settings and atmosphere. The goings on at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry include a murder-bent voice in the walls that only Harry can hear and a mysterious set of attacks that leave several students and the nasty caretaker's cat petrified. Moreover, Harry must endure the fawning of foppish new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart (given goofy comic brio by a wavily coiffed Kenneth Branagh) and the ostracism of students who fear that, because he can talk to snakes, Harry may be the "heir" of rogue school founder Salazar Slytherin. Alan Rickman adds a brooding quizzicality to the spitefulness of oleaginous Potions professor Severus Snape; the late Richard Harris is pale and breathy but continues to exude sly, gentle wisdom as headmaster Albus Dumbledore; and Maggie Smith is back, in all her pursed authority and Scottish cadence, as prim deputy headmistress Minerva McGonagall. A marvelously sinister addition to the extracurricular populace is icy Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy, father of Harry's arch-enemy Draco. As for the trio of child actors at the heart of the story, Daniel Radcliffe has gained grit and gravitas as Harry, and Emma Watson continues to exude precocity as the brainy Hermione. But mugging Rupert Grint, so personable as Ron in The Sorcerer's Stone, appears to have studied too long at the Macaulay Culkin School of Home Alone acting, Chris Columbus, headmaster. (162m)

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