The year is 2023, and Republicans rule the earth.
In the nation of the NFFA (New Founding Fathers of America), street hucksters hawk handguns instead of handbags. A national holiday called The Purge, where all crime is legal for 12 hours, is presented as spiritual cleansing, a bloody baptism at "the altar of Smith and Wesson."
In reality, it lets the one percent kill off the poor so they don't have to spend as much money on welfare, education, and other social programs. On the night of crime, the rich either hunker down in their elaborate home shelters and watch the Netflix of the future, or don tweed and plus fours to hunt game livelier than any fox or pheasant.
The Purge series' blunt as brick social commentary has entertainment value"”political sympathizers and eye rollers both can have a chuckle. However, the first movie tempered this with a dutiful, if uninspired, execution of a basic home invasion thriller. It told the story of a single family trying to defend their home.
The Purge: Anarchy, on the other hand, suffers when trying to tell a story on a larger scale. There are three main players: a mysterious man gets decked out to Purge for his own reasons (Frank Grillo), a poor mother and daughter flee ravishers (Carmen Ejogo and Zoe Soul), and an it's-complicated couple's car breaks down on the wrong night (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez). The narratives aren't woven together, though"”they're strung, like the lynched banker on the steps of A Bank in the film's latter half.
Of particular frustration is the clairvoyance of the two women as they seem to summon up the mysterious man's motivations like so many lost spirits. All of a sudden, the daughter knows that "You don't have to do this. He wouldn't like it." It puts the noticeable talents of the actors involved to the breaking point"”it seems that Grillo can barely hide his frustration. This interview hints of differences on set. It's unfortunate, because this was a huge opportunity for Frank Grillo, who is a titan and deserves to be the star of a better movie. If this movie was just about his character, it would have been a thousand times better.
The poor characterization could be forgivable if the film offered even the vanilla scares of its predecessor, but it confusingly pulls back from straight horror. There are some good shots, particularly when introducing the characters in the opening minutes. There are some moments of tension. But not enough to redeem the whole effort.
The Purge will probably still generate another movie. It doesn't deserve to. The evolution of the series' genre makes it hard to predict whether it will stray back towards horror or continue away. Even if it comes back to the scares, the great horror franchises need things Purge lacks: compelling villains. Cc Jason, Freddy, Pinhead, Jigsaw. But the film's satisfaction for mere caricatures, political cartoons, as villains, prevents it from reaching any significant height.
The premise of the series could have made fun dystopia. It smacks of the short story The Lottery, against a backdrop of consumerism and trash. The final product, however, is genre that might work well for half-watching by a bored late night television audience, but not a theater experience by a discerning one.
