Review by Bob Ignizio
Dystopian survival-horror/action-thriller THE PURGE posits
that, in the year 2022, one
financial crisis too many results in a strange and disturbing rebirth of America. Under the leadership of "The New Founding Fathers", a majority of Americans
agree with their program of allowing a once a year, 12 hour period in which all crime
(including murder) is legal as a sort of societal release valve. This somehow solves not just the
country's financial problems, but more or less eliminates crime the
rest of the year, as well. The Purge, as it's called, is so successful that substantive opposition to it appears nonexistant (at least we don't see or hear any in the film). In fact, it seems that most people treat the Purge
with an almost religious fervor, mouthing party-line slogans about
purifying the soul. In case you didn't do the math, all this is
supposed to be just a mere 9 years from now.
Our
window on this world is an upper-middle class family headed up by the
status and money chasing salesman James Sandin (Ethan Hawke). He's made a
killing selling expensive security systems to other families like
his, including most of his neighbors. Wife Mary (Lena Headey) appears
to have some reservations about the Purge and the way her family
profits from it, but for the most part keeps them to herself.
Teenage Zoey (Adelaide Kane) is more concerned with her father's
efforts to prevent her from seeing boyfriend Henry (Tony Oller) than
any bigger moral questions, leaving the youngest Sandin, Charlie (Max
Burkholder), to act as the moral center of the family when a potential victim of the purge (Edwin Hodge) comes seeking shelter from his attackers.
THE
PURGE
asks its audience to swallow an awful lot of implausible nonsense,
but it's possible to suspend disbelief for just about anything if
it's done well enough. After all, revered as it is, Rod Serling's The
Twilight Zone
served up some pretty ridiculous premises from which to hang its
social commentaries at times. Because the acting,
directing, and writing on Zone
were generally of such a high caliber, though, you could overlook some of
the more preposterous plot elements.
Writer/director
James DeMonaco is no Rod Serling, though. He's no Paul Bartel for
that matter, either. If he were, he might have realized that treating
this material as more of a black comedy, as Bartel did in the
similarly themed DEATH
RACE 2000,
might have made its utter ridiculousness easier to buy into while
still allowing room for a message via satire. But no, for the most
part DeMonaco takes a very solemn tone, as if what he's depicting is
some real, literal, and imminent danger.
Aside
from pointing out humanity's inherent bloodlust, DeMonaco also uses
his film to comment on upper middle class greed and status chasing,
familial discord, and the way veterans are mistreated after doing
their service, all of which winds up getting kind of muddled. And then there's the inherent hypocrisy of
making a movie that takes an anti-violence stance on the one hand,
but then includes multiple scenes intended to get the audience
cheering when the “good” characters kill the “bad” ones.
The
film's only real entertainment value comes from a pair of scenery
chewing performances straight out of an eighties B movie. Hawke
provides one of them, all swaggering arrogant tool at first, then
morphing into a frantic parent fighting for the lives of his family
once their home comes under attack. The film's MVP,
however, is Rhys Wakefield as the leader of the gang besieging the Sandin
family. Said gang is essentially the rich kids' fraternity from every
eighties teen comedy ever made if they decided to wear the masks from
THE STRANGERS and
become
one of the gangs from THE
WARRIORS.
As their leader, Wakefield goes full-on movie psycho while still
embodying the kind of privileged douche-baggery one would expect from
a character giving Robert Carradine a wedgie.
Outside
of those two bright spots, the rest of the film is pretty tepid
stuff. Once you get past premise, which we've already seen variation
of in everything from the aforementioned DEATH
RACE 2000
to the recent hit THE
HUNGER GAMES,
the film settles into being a run-of-the-mill riff on the old “family
fighting back against a home invasion” subgenre (see LAST
HOUSE ON THE LEFT,
FIGHT FOR YOUR
LIFE).
But since the film isn't willing to go all the way with the potential
transgressiveness and exploitation sleaze of its premise, nor is it
willing to fully embrace its potential for camp, it winds up a mediocre
bore that never quite finds a consistent tone or makes its point with any degree of impact. 2 out of 4 stars.
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