With The Dark Knight Rises, director Christopher Nolan brings his masterpiece of a saga, seven years in the making, to a riveting, sinister close.

The movie opens in Gotham eight years following the events of The Dark Knight. The Batman (Christian Bale) has gone into hiding after taking the fall for the death of city idol and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), going from hero to public enemy number one in the process. His alter ego, eccentric billionaire Bruce Wayne, has also become a recluse, confining himself to a wing of his enormous mansion.

While organized crime has seemingly been eliminated from the city, Gotham does not remain danger-free for long. A sly, sleek catburglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) who we know to be Catwoman, although she is never referred to as such seeks the technology to erase herself from all official records, crossing paths with Wayne in the process. Ultimately, however, she proves to be more of a nuisance than an adversary to the protagonist.

Decidedly more menacing is the hulking, masked villain named Bane (Tom Hardy) who emerges to finish Ra’s Al Ghul’s (Liam Neeson, Batman Begins) mission of destroying the corrupted Gotham, forcing the Dark Knight to rise once more to protect a city that has branded him a murderer. Unlike previous villains, who only challenged the Batman mentally, Bane is presented as both a physical and a psychological terror who forces Wayne and his alter ego to face their deepest fears through torture and incarceration. While others may have proved more memorable adversaries, Bane’s approach pits the Batman against the hero’s true worst enemy: himself.

Through Bane, Nolan succeeds in creating another uniquely terrifying villain; Bane speaks through a frightening mask, and his growling, slightly mechanized voice sends chills up the spines of everyone in the theater. The distortion sometimes becomes a hindrance for the audience, however; subtitles are necessary on several occasions to decipher his guttural snarl. As the film progresses, Bane’s speech becomes more understandable, allowing the audience to revel in the threatening aura and their own disbelief that the huge mass of muscle before them is actually Tom Hardy.

Also joining the cast are Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who enthralls as the shrewd young cop John Blake, and Inception co-star Marion Cotillard, who brings her charm and cunning to the role of the wealthy Miranda Tate. Familiar faces reemerge as well; Gary Oldman returns as Police Commissioner Jim Gordon and Michael Caine once again plays Wayne’s endearing butler Alfred. While the number of new faces may seem overwhelming to some, Nolan’s additions are logical considering the time passed and they only serve to improve the storyline.

In true Nolan fashion, the beautifully-crafted visual and audio effects augment the intensity of the film, creating a world so realistic that the audience has no choice but to be sucked in. Hans Zimmer delivers musical brilliance as always, creating a tenebrous, sinister soundtrack that perfectly complements the story’s darkling tone. Furthermore, the interplay between light and darkness reaches its artistic zenith in The Dark Knight Rises, enriching the film’s dichotomies of hope and fear, chaos and order and creating a multidimensional message that viewers will be sure to discuss and ponder for days. And, true to form, Nolan employs sensational special effects in the scenes of spectacular explosions and destruction. (Watch it in IMAX for the full experience, you will thank me later.)

Unlike other recently released superhero-comic-turned-Hollywood-blockbusters, The Dark Knight Rises is not laden with comic relief and does not come with the assurance that good will always prevail. Rather, this last installment of the trilogy thrusts the audience into a world of disorder and despair so real that they almost become frightened Gotham citizens themselves. The allusions to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and its accompanying sense of anarchy are clear and intensify the film’s ominous realism, leaving viewers hoping that there was some truth to Harvey Dent’s statement in The Dark Knight: “The night is darkest just before the dawn.” Far from becoming depressing, however, Nolan’s movie provides a surprisingly refreshing break from the hackneyed, traditional superhero story line.

Although The Dark Knight Rises is a captivating piece de resistance on its own, watching the entire trilogy is essential to truly understanding the plot. Without knowledge of the first two movies, the Inception-esque flashbacks that pepper the film seem disjointed and meaningless, and other subtle gems like a foreboding reappearance of a familiar face will be lost on the viewer. For those who have watched the movies, however, wonderfully startling new connections among all three films are elucidated, enhancing the cohesion of the saga.

With thrilling action, a shocking twist, and an ending that will have the audience holding their collective breath, The Dark Knight Rises artfully brings Nolan’s magnum opus of a trilogy to an exhilarating and fitting conclusion.

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some sensuality and language.