"He-who-must-not-be-named" was, indeed, not named by audience members walking out of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1" on its Friday opening day at the AMC ShowPlace Niles 12 Theater at Golf Mill Shopping Center in Niles.

Instead, movie-goers focused on the much-loved main characters of wizards Harry, Ron and Hermione, though they acknowledged the crackling tension between the trio's force of good, the Order of the Phoenix, versus the hangers-on of the Dark Lord, in this seventh movie based on the series of Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling.

"It's definitely suspenseful and exciting," said Katie Chambers of Chicago, who came to the movie with her cousins Megan and Keeley Cunningham.

"It had a very good pace. It didn't feel like there was any downtime," said Richard Ramos of Glenview, who watched the movie with Julita Opada of Des Plaines. 

Some of the fans were fascinated by the movie's elements of the wizarding world.

"There's three more horcruxes he (Harry) has to find. In the end of this movie, he gets Dumbledore's wand, the first deathly hallow," said Chambers. 

Horcruxes are objects in which the Dark Lord hides part of his soul so that he can live immortally, according to the books. And the hallows are three powerfully magical objects, said in the wizarding world to make their owners invincible to death.

Paulina Graca and Caroline Ryciuk, both of Niles, found all that very interesting. The high school students have been fans for a long time, they said. 

Besides the magical themes, they also responded to the mood of the movie.

"I think this movie was more emotional," Graca said. "I almost cried."

Robyn McNaughton of Niles, also a high school student, said she, too, was almost crying at one point because she thought a character had died, but Ron's older brothers Fred and George, the laughter-loving Weasley twins, started joking around, and it turned out the character didn't die.

Her brother Rodger McNaughton, 12, picked up on the fact that Harry's nemesis, Draco Malfoy, seemed hesitant to carry out the deeds his father, who is allied with the dark forces, planned for him.

"Draco seemed a little scared. I don't think he really wanted to kill people," he said.

Many of the movie-watchers had grown up with Harry Potter. Rodger McNaughton, for example, remembers wearing a Harry Potter costume for Halloween when he was still in preschool.

And they'll grow up a little more before "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is released in 2011.

"The ending of this one was a total cliffhanger," said Chambers. "I can't wait for the next one."