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    The Purge

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    I wanted to like “The Purge” so badly, but ultimately the premise is wasted on a generic home invasion horror film. I love the backstory of this world and I’m looking forward to the sequels. This first installment? It’s nothing but squandered potential.

    The purge is set in 2022, and for some time, the “New Founding Fathers of America” have found a way to solve all of society’s woes. It’s inconceivable, but unemployment has been reduced to 1%, crime is virtually non-existent and the economy is thriving due to “The Purge”. On March 21st, for a 12-hour period of time that starts at 7:00 PM, all emergency services are suspended and all crime, including murder, is legal. James Sandin (Ethan Hawke), his wife Mary (Lena Headey) and their two children, Zoey (Adelaide Kane) and Charlie (Max Burkholder) are bunkered up for the annual purge. When Charlie opens their doors to a homeless man pursued by murderous teenagers, the Sandins are given an ultimatum by the Purgers: deliver the man or get ready for an all-out siege.

    There are a lot of mistakes made with this picture. I’m going to focus on how the film doesn’t utilize the universe it sets up to its full potential in the hopes that someone reads this blog and steals my suggestions (hey, you can dream, right?) but first, let’s just look at the picture as a horror film.

    As a home-invasion thriller/horror, it’s nothing special. There are plenty of jump scares (which aren’t scares at all, they’re just musical cues applied to startling moments) but few genuine moments of tension. The homeless man (Edwin Hodge) for instance. You can see his actions coming from a mile away. Aside from being a trigger to get the plot kick-started, he doesn’t provide much. It’s one of these movies where the characters act like they’ve never seen a horror movie in their life, something inconceivable because they live in a world where mass murder takes place yearly! I lost count of how many times characters that were told to stay in one spot decided to ignore these instructions and move about or groups split up so they could be singled out and attacked. You can only conclude that these people are too stupid to survive in the world they live in.

    I love the premise of “The Purge”. It’s a horror film that’s way out there but there’s a lot of potential for different stories as well as social commentary. Instead of having a slasher be the recurring character in subsequent films, you have a whole world that’s ready to kill you! What’s frustrating is that Sandins, the characters we see more than everyone else act like The Purge is some new thing they’ve just been introduced to a few days ago. How different would a society where The Purge exists and murder, as long as it’s within the confines of specific rules, is perfectly acceptable? Home security would be a big business, but what else? Do people act extra nice to each other so they avoid becoming targets on March 21/22nd? Do people express their love for each other differently because they see vicious crimes as simple facts of life? You only get the briefest glimpse of how this society works, and even then only when the camera focuses on the villains of the picture. Even then it’s a letdown because once the events of this year’s Purge are over, I have no idea how people are going to react. If you manage to dodge your neighbors’ chainsaw until 7:01, does he simply turn off the weapon, reach out his hand to help you up and the two of you laugh it off? It’s like writer James DeMonaco created this world and then without really hammering out all of the details decided to rush out this story.

    Considering everything that happens in this world, this first is a bowl of plain vanilla yogurt. I don’t want to see this microcosm of nation-wide murder, I want a feel for what the whole country is doing. I want to see some of the stuff they allude to, such as gangs running around looking for people to chop into pieces, amputees from previous purges getting their revenge on their past aggressors, teenagers who have finally become old enough to get their parents’ permission to go out and kill their school principal. What do we get instead? A regular family, people that could be from our regular world under attack. Even if this was a really well-executed home invasion horror, something as good as “You’re Next”, it would be a disappointment. Maybe it would be a nice change of pace if this had been the third or fourth “Purge” but as a first entry? It’s lame. Don’t you agree?

    What would society be like if we had a yearly period to do whatever we wanted and exorcise our demons? I still have no idea. That’s the last thing I expected to say after seeing “The Purge”. I thought maybe I could give the film a mild recommendation for the premise alone, but that’s the only thing this picture has going for it. With two sequels (the second being released in July of 2016) I’m sure you’ll get to see this done better elsewhere than this 2013 horror film that’s largely devoid of scares. (On Ultraviolet, March 19, 2016)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  2.7.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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