Review of The First Purge (2018) by Pipec — 31 Oct 2018

A franchise that succumbs without a taste of its own medicine: purgation. With all the odds in its favor, Blumhouse has released its would-be summer hit in the form of a prequel of James DeMonaco's successful utopia — at least in box-office terms, — aiming at big dividends, mainly, in American cinemas. If this is true, then it'd surely mean the elongation of this overwhelmingly worn premise for a couple of more years on the big screen, not counting USA Network's TV series. "The First Purge," an origin film about the birth of the controversial law that has grossed almost USD$ 320 million since 2013, is, by far, one of the most generic, tasteless and violent movies of the company since, paradoxically, the highly ambitious second installment of this same franchise starring Carmen Ejogo and Frank Grillo. "The First Purge" is probably the first and unique of the entire franchise that has a really considerable social-commentary dose, still and all its thick-headedness and inefficiency, since if it is compared with its predecessors/successors, Gerard McMurray strives to say something— via bestial, outrageous scenes that find a solution in controversial violence —about caustic inequality, race snobbery, political manipulation and bigotry, all clumsily enclosed in a political bubble that, strangely, never bursts. DeMonaco taking a back seat in favor of a "new" voice brings on drastic changes into the narrative and visual field; a moderately healthy decision. Although he doesn't enrich the mythos, neither fortifies its origins, he delivers a balanced approach in content but unbalanced in quality. On this occasion, the film doesn't know what it is, a "Get-Out"-ish social freak out or an unsurprising survival thriller, a dilemma drowned, as usual, by a range of ear-shattering stings. The characters, far from throwing away modern action film stereotypes, are easy preys to meaningless, cat's paws running around and butchering to preserve their lives. Fortunately, unlike the thousands of mindless horror offerings out there, here the relationships between the characters involve a sense of humanity, which automatically causes that, at some point in the film, we worry about the fate of these fictitious individuals. Peculiarly, antagonistic weight doesn't fall on a fixed actor, rather strongly belongs to wicked government intervention distorting the already nefarious experiment. This is one of its few strong suits, however, much like characters, the shallowness of this "villain" doesn't even try to fight audience's predictions, falling into "race against the clock" field over and over again, a lost race.

Y'lan Noel plays the tritely cold-blooded gangster/action hero in a good way, with a strange charm that ends up echoing among the audience. Unfortunately, Dimitri, his character, is portrayed as a violent, vengeful man, two adjectives that clash with the notion of savior in this kind of film. Lex Scott Davis is who delivers the best performance, even if her character is nothing but another indomitable girl; alright, she gets a special plotting push, but, in the end, is one more final girl saved by a super-man. Mugga, the usual Afro-American comedy-horror comic-relief, does quite well her work, is a positive addition to the melodrama that bathes part of the story. I'm absolutely confident that this film will be remembered for two huge disasters: one, R.I.P. promising premise; two, an unfairly wasted Marisa Tomei. They've muted Tomei's character and that's an unforgivable mistake. In the first two acts, the creative mind behind this "social catharsis" doesn't say more than six lines — the first one, in front of an egregious green screen —and as soon as the third act kicks off, a certain "twist" takes place and destroys everything. Marvel's new Aunt May could have been a dream villain, clearly, with a worthy-of-respect design and treatment; alas, it was the greatest sin of a ramshackle tragedy. "The First Purge" by Gerard McMurray is just another run-of-the-mill thriller; a rushed B-movie throwback that doesn't even set up DeMonaco's gloomy, eye-catching visual spectacle. But, at the very least, it does achieve to deliver an obtuse edge of complexity to a premise that was on its last legs, burying a meaty context that hardly will resurface, at least, with brand-new stuff. After an insufferably lengthy period of almost seven hours — the four films' runtime belonging to this franchise, — something has happened: the experiment has expired. Mixing together DeMonaco's ever-aggressive pulp imagery and McMurray's improvement of some storytelling purposes, a perversely violent-yet-juicy cinematic cocktail may have come out from all this madness, unfortunately, said utopia will never be a reality; the experiment is over.