It’s a war movie, they told us—the final film of the decade-long Harry Potter series was always going to end with the battle for Hogwarts. With Harry looking death and Lord Voldemort squarely in the face, with good (hopefully) triumphing over evil. That was how it had to be. Harry Potter made his big-screen debut just two months after 9/11— when our nation needed a charming 11-year-old with big, round glasses to be brave for us all. Since then, we’ve watched its stars—Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson—grow from cherubs to gangly teens to surprisingly well-adjusted twentysomethings, tasked with driving our escape vehicle without ever having a license. The ride is finally over—but they sure finished in style.

While the later Potter films have only dabbled with 3D, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is sparks-flying spectacle from beginning to end. It picks up right where Part 1 left off, and if you don’t know where that is, director David Yates isn’t telling. In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, the filmmakers admitted the price of admission is knowing what happened in the first seven films. Not to say that this movie is for the uber-fans: There are plenty of Potter readers who will bemoan differences in the final act (which I’ll bemoan in a minute), but on its own—free from comparison with all seven bestselling books and another seven movies that brought in roughly $300 million each— Hallows: Part 2 is a visually stunning, emotionally satisfying finale.

It opens briskly: Within the first 15 minutes, Harry, Ron, and Hermoine have already snuck into Gringotts Wizarding Bank to steal one of the remaining Horcruxes, and blasted out of the cavernous underground vaults on the back of a blind, albino dragon. Yeah, it only gets crazier from there. Yates conducts a chilling battle sequence at the Hogwarts School: Walls crumble, children run screaming or fall prey to a werewolf, bridges explode, giants swing battleaxes. Beloved characters start dying. There’s triumph as Maggie Smith’s tough-as-nails Professor McGonagall magics an army of stone knights into locomotion; there’s terror as the Dark Lord-as-general whispers his demands loudly in everyone’s ear, like a devil on their shoulder. But the film really excels when it slows down and gives Potter’s veteran cast of British thespians—namely Alan Rickman as Professor Snape—the chance to show off. The muffled sobs in the audience started with Snape’s final scene, when his true motives are revealed, and only got louder when Harry marches to the Forbidden Forest to give himself up to Lord Voldemort.

Unfortunately, the final act sacrifices story for special effects. The scene where Neville destroys the snake Nagini? When Mrs. Weasley duels with Bellatrix Lestrange? They feel more like jokes, nods to the book readers, rather than moments for the characters to show how brave they, too, have become. It’s a bit less terrifying than Deathly Hallows: Part 1. In the end, Yates reminds us that it’s still mostly children fighting a man’s war—and mostly children filling the theater.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is in theaters July 15.