Written by: James DeMonaco
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Adelaide Kane, Max Burkholder
Rating: [2.5/5]
Methods in trying to curb crime in America have gone in various different directions in order get to a crime-free society. Ultimately a feat impossible to achieve completely, which The Purge posits as a radical idea delivering some great results. However, the idea works just great until it impacts you on an individual level which we see firsthand in this feature where it works very well conceptually but falters in its execution.
Crime is at an all-time low as well as unemployment in the United States of America because of a newly implemented national event where all crime becomes legal for 12 hours. James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) heavily believes in the good of the purge with an expensive security system that keeps them safe until the recent purge where his son allows a man being chased by masked killers to take refuge in their home. Conflicted on sending the man out to die, they must withstand the assault of these masked murderers breaking their way into the home.
While it may not speak well of the final product of the narrative, the best asset of this feature lies in the premise rather than how the story plays out. The idea of a day existing on the calendar where individuals can blow off all of the steam they have built up throughout the year and unleash it in whatever they see fit for a span of 12 hours alleviating the need to commit crime for the remaining 99% of the year makes for an interesting thought experiment. Similarly how someone could engage in a scheduled cheat day during their diet in order to stay sane. Whether this psychologically would make a difference in the real world, it sets up excellent material for a horror film.
With this narrative, you certainly see the differences in how the purge impacts those with the means to protect themselves versus those without thus having a higher chance of succumbing to the whims of others. We see this very directly with the Dandin family as opposed to the homeless Black man (Edwin Hodge) who runs to their house for protection. The Sandins can speak well all they want about the purge when they can set up a security system that will prevent anyone from trying to attack them, which makes these purgers coming directly to their door as something flipping the table on them so to speak.
However, the build-up to the purgers arriving represents the very best of the film, because once it turns into a home invasion story, it loses all steam and the quality drops precipitously. The initial appearance of these purgers definitely presents a fright in their ghoulish masks and one can easily infer what type of ritualistic killing they enjoy with the fact they seek to target a homeless Black man for sport. Once the home invasion begins, everything becomes quite average, does not deliver scares, and sincerely does not get interesting again until the finale where more reveals about the societal impact comes to the foreground.
Coming into this story with the idea of a home invasion certainly has potential but when presenting a setup like a purge the more fascinating narrative to follow would be one seeing what happens on the streets instead of this singular house. Something they immediately correct in the much superior sequel, The Purge: Anarchy. Having to get through the majority of the dreck in this feature establishes that anyone can just skip what this presents and get into the more exciting story fully displaying the havoc of this concept with regular people. Now this feature does set up the class disparity of how this even works but in the end, combining that with the home invasion element does not really make for something fully engaging, especially when shot in such a mediocre manner.
Definitely worth of praise because of the concept it brings but not necessarily exciting in what it presents the audience with, The Purge serves as the sacrificial lamb for a far more interesting set of films succeeding it. This feature lays down all of the groundwork in establishing just how sinister and relentless these individual purging can be as well as not fully knowing those that can be trusted during this yearly exercise. Definitely a mixed bag here but one that certainly had the potential of becoming something uniquely special, it just focused far too internally as opposed to where the real intrigue lies.
Films with Josh 