Since this is the 7th movie in the series, you pretty much have to be caught up by this point because it gets right into the plot without explaining much, but that's simply because it would take too much time. After just reading the book for the second time, I can safely say that I would have been mostly lost if I hadn't read it.

The movie's pacing is all over the place. The first third has a very brisk pace, but then it slows down a LOT in the middle, but to be fair that's how it went in the book too. Then it finally starts to pick up again near the end. This is also, put simply, a road movie with Harry, Ron, and Hermione out to find the remaining horcruxes, while camping in many different locations and getting themselves in one situation after another. Some of these situations were pretty downplayed compared to the book, but some, such as the Malfoy manor scene were handled much better.

What more can you say about Harry, Ron, and Hermione at this point? This movie is all about them, more than any of the other movies. However, this does give them nice moments of character development. Of course many other characters make appearances, but they are only around for 1 or 2 scenes.

The film has a dark and tight feel to it. Many scenes are filmed very up close and some are so dark I could barely see what's going on, which took a lot of impact out of those scenes (you think they would use that Lumos spell more often). However the set pieces, such as the forest, for the most part look nice.

This is not my favorite movie in the series. It fact it might not even make the top 3, but still it could be worse. I'm just glad I read the book first.