Harry Potter & The Prisoner Of Azkaban Director Weighs In On Whether It’s A Horror Movie
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban director Alfonso Cuarón questioned whether this was a horror film or not. Released in 2004, the third installment of the series is adapted from J. K. Rowling’s novel of the same name and follows Harry Potter’s third year at Hogwarts as he tries to discover the truth about Sirius Black. Prisoner of Azkaban is the first and only Harry Potter film directed by Cuarón, who succeeded Chris Columbus, and is known for directing films across many genres, such as Children of Men, Gravity and Roma. In a new interview with Total Film (via GamesRadar), Cuarón was asked if he considered Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban a horror film. The director had a definitive answer, saying it was “definitely” a horror film and went on to explain why it contains so many horror elements, including inspiration from Fritz Lang to F.W. Murnau. Read Cuarón’s full comments below:
Yes sure. As I read the book, two elements stood out to me. There are horror movie elements but there are also dark aspects. In a way, when I made it, the model resembled German cinema in terms of the end of silence and the move to talkies, like Fritz Lang in Murnau. You can see that some of Fritz Lang’s films are dark but also have horror elements. And above all, especially with Fritz Lang, he sought through genre to convey – or quite simply to express – the anxieties of his time. I think that’s what J.K. Rowling did with Potter, it alludes to our times, to human behavior.
Is Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban A Horror Movie?
Prisoner of Azkaban cannot be clearly considered a horror film because it still belongs to the fantasy genre. However, the third Harry Potter film presents a more disturbing and darker tone, especially compared to the relatively light tone established by the first two films in the Columbus-directed series. This tonal shift represents the majority of the main characters and their coming of age, setting the tone for the entire series and future episodes directed by Mike Newell and David Yates. While Prisoner of Azkaban may not be a horror film in the traditional sense, it still has some horror elements, as mentioned by Cuarón. It follows the dark, menacing dementors who guard Azkaban Prison and Professor Remus Lupin, who is secretly a predatory werewolf. Much of the film’s climax also takes place at the Shrieking Shack, a spooky and supposedly haunted building. Although Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is still a family fantasy film, it’s easy to see why Cuarón classified it as horror.