I'll be reviewing The Purge movies in the sequence the story is told in and not in chronological order.
The First Purge is a really good prequel to the original movie, I really enjoyed seeing how the Purge began, the first act has an ominous foreboding tone to it as you know that all hell is about to break loose as soon as that siren starts up. It does a good job at getting you invested in the characters, especially gang boss Dmitri played by Y'Ian Noel, who has a satisfying character arc, becoming a total action hero by the end.
I like that while The Purge films can be seen as fun action/horror movies they are based around a very interesting philosophical question, if all crime was legal for one night, how would people behave?.
While it is over the top if such a thing did occur I can see the events unfolding as they do in this film, particularly when the new founding fathers who put the night in place find that they are not receiving the desired effect and they send free lance militants in to boost the statistics by killing innocent civilians, resulting in the largest gang in Stanton island essentially becoming the citizens only form of defence. It's a cool idea and makes perfect sense, gang members are territorial and do have a warped but in tact sense of morality.
Generally if you're not involved in organised crime they have no interest in you and I can see them revolting against the government when it steps in to threaten their community, inadvertently turning everyday criminals into heroes.
It moves ahead at a breakneck pace once the action begins and never lets up, I can't really fault this movie at all, it's a very strong prequel with tons of rewatch value.
The Purge. Usually the tension is built in home invasion films by the family being totally unprepared for an unexpected attack on their home, The Purge takes this concept and twists it, in this case they couldn't have been more prepared, their home is essentially a fortress designed purely to survive the nights events.
It's a really creative movie that plays within the home invasion genre but adds a dystopian flavour to it. The family have to survive the night after letting in a wounded homeless man who is being hunted by a group of highly educated and entitled psychopathic college kids born into wealth seeking to take out their rage on the underprivileged as if it were a mere pastime hobby.
The original Purge is one of the best home invasion films out there.
The Purge: Anarchy is not a bad attempt at a sequel to the original but it has a lot of writing problems. The first act of the film has a split focus on a few different characters, only one of which I cared about who is essentially a knock off of The Punisher, not that I'm complaining, Frank Grillo would have made a great Frank Castle, the other characters though were fairly disposable and two dimensional which made it hard to get invested in their story even when the situations they're put in are pretty compelling.
I really like the idea of seeing unarmed people having to survive on the streets, amidst all the chaos of the purge, a concept that the prequel does much better than this movie. I like some of the expansions in the law, two highlights being that there is now a black militant group based on the black panthers that are fighting back against the established order. I also quite like the addition that the extremely wealthy hire gangs to abduct victims so that they may slaughter them in private in a sort of running man scenario.
I really like the idea of following a citizen who intends to engage in the purge. I think that's the thing with this movie, it has a lot of ideas, some of them very good ideas but they're dragged down a bit by poor characterisation, convenient plot points and a few illogical decisions made by certain side characters, that were clearly only written in to push the story forward without any consideration as to if they made sense for them to do or not.
It's not a bad film, it's entertaining enough for what it is.
The Purge: Election Year is a forgettable action flick, I'm not a huge fan of the direction The Purge series went in with its sequels,
the franchise works best as a survival horror not as a dystopian set action film. The political commentary is most prominent here than in other films and its all a bit ham fisted. The characters are unremarkable and while it works as a straight up action film, it's a bit too generic for my taste.
I liked seeing Frank Grillo back but I didn't find it all that believable that he character conveniently decided to become the presidents bodyguard, like that's a job you can just get without any real prior experience, save for being in the armed forces, that and his psychological profile wouldn't exactly check out as he did intend to kill someone in annual Purge in the last movie.
Overall the film is fine for what it is.
The Forever Purge is a pretty enjoyable end to the series that although didn't quite give me everything I wanted takes the story to its logical conclusion. The premise is that the citizens of America have become desensitised and accustomed to the legal ultra-violence they're allowed to indulge in on the night of the purge that they collectively decide to send the United States into a lasting state of anarchy.
That alone is a great idea, but it's not really what we get when the film is over. Really the film focuses on how far right groups in particular would respond to the purge and how they would use it as a means of ethnically cleansing America and the uprising the film chooses to focus on is purely about that, rather than the rising bloodlust of ordinary people getting out of control.
The latter I think would have made for a stronger film and a stronger message as the purge films are all centred around the fallacies of the catharsis hypothesis, that expressing built up anger helps to maintain a sense of control and order, which has been proven not to work. That said it's not a bad movie, it is very on the nose with its political messaging though.
Overall, it's not the worst purge film and it has a few interesting ideas but it could have done a bit more with its concept.
Add comment
Comments