Film Review – THE PURGE ★★☆☆☆

Welcome to America in 2022. A nation reborn. Unemployment is down to 1%, people get along just fine, and crime is non-existent. Well that last part has a huge asterisk attached. One night a year, the government sanctions a night for citizens to commit prosecution-free crime, which includes murder, and all emergency services are suspended. By allowing The Purge, as its called, the idea is everyone’s pent up agression is permitted for a scheduled release during a 12-hour period, leaving only peace and harmony for the remaining 364 calendar days of the year. Though certain upper classes and government officials are exempt as potential ‘victims,’ for the most part its the perceived vagrant tier who are the ones used as target practice when the right to “unleash the beast” is savagely invoked.

If you can get past this ridiculous scenario set in a dystopian future, you will be able to hang on board for this tense and bloody home invasion thriller. To be fair though for all you snarky nitpickers, the dystopian future premise here is still not as far fetched than anything presented in The Hunger Games. It’s also worth nothing that The Purge is an extremely violent film, with more than a fair amount of bloody graphic gun play. But there is no pretension in the advertising that it would be anything otherwise, so you should know full well what you are setting yourself up for once your ass in settled in the theater.

Ethan Hawke plays James Sandin, a high-end home-security salesman who has made a lot of profit by outfitting his well-to-do gated community with Purge-proof systems. At 7PM on March 21st its Purge night as usual, and he battens down the hatches at his spacious abode for hopefully 12 incident free hours with wife Mary (Lena Headey) and children Zoey (Adelaide Kane) and Charlie (Max Burkholder).

Lockdown is going well as can be until Charlie takes pity on an bloody and battered outsider who has a murderous masked gang hot on his tail. The silly child lets him into the house and things go downhill quickly from there. On this night, its the ominous gang’s full legal right to cleanse society of this vagrant. Their leader (a chilling and over the top Rhys Wakefield) demands that the Sadins surrender the stranger for imminent slaughter, or they will use the necessary tools to tear into their home and kill everyone, which is still within their legal Purge night rights.

The film sticks firmly to its ridiculous moral-less premise, and only once you accept that all forms of extreme violence is legal in the United States for a 12-hour period can you move forward. But they play it correct by their own twisted rule book. But on the surface there is an intense thriller about self preservation that at times delivers edge of your seat scares and suspense. It certainly has its jump out moments at times manages to maintain a non-stop pulse pounding pace that should satisfy the intended audience of this genre. There are less than subtle comments on race, class and the underlying turncoat nature that may exist in a Stepford Wives worthy neighborhood, but all rolled into the film’s scant running time, a platform for over analyzing social commentary this is not.

Follow @NerdyRScoundrel