Review of The Purge (2013) by Simon W — 22 Sep 2015

It takes precisely 10 seconds into The Purge's opening titles to work out that this film, is not going to be very good. When the names Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes grace the screen, you can pretty much expect some lower than average attempt at horror, which most likely came to you for a pretty penny.

The truth is in fact that The Purge is terrible, even though some of its concepts and sequences actually have something going for them, the entire films execution however, is completely average and full of standard cheap flair.

In the not too distant future, the American government decides to implement an annual 12 hour span, where the citizens have free reign to commit whichever crime they choose. The aim of this is supposed to lower crime rate on the whole and make human beings better people.

In one extremely rich area, James Sandin, the lead salesman of home security and his family live an over privillaged life, full of security and perks. So come the night of the purge, the aptly named title for this Battle Royal style system, James and his family undergo a series of predictable and pretty coinsidential circumstances, that put their lives in serious danger.

On the whole The Purge is hardly anything new, some new age government create some violent system to fight crime, the idea of home invasion, families fighting for their lives, its all been done before and a million times better.

However the core idea behind the film is one a viewer can actually get behind, it has rare moments of unease and a tendency to have you asking the question, "what if?". However too quickly does the film feel like an episode of Family Affairs, with some jump scares thrown in for good measure, that any tension or effect created by the films own foundations are completely destroyed, over and over again.

The film stars Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey, two actors that are actually decent, although Hawke has struggled to release anything of actual merit as of late, Headey has very rarely ever let her audience down, except here, where she has nothing to work with and is employed only to look scared.

Hawke actually provides the best work here, but saying that is probably being a tad too kind, as the standard of performance given overall is completely atrocious. The film takes a leaf out the War Of The Worlds remake books and includes two child characters, who we are forced to relate with, who are completely stupid and annoying.

Why can people not write children for entertainment? Not every child is annoying, stupid, easily fooled... In fact most children are like sponges and will absorb everything around them. Here however, the kids Zoe and Charlie are completely unbearable, running away from their parents constantly, just because they are in slight disagreement with their actions, forcing half the film to be about moving children from one room to another, or going to search for the missing child.

As mentioned Lena is here just to look scared, even when the director gives her 2 guns, she walks about with them and never uses them, or show incline of doing so, even when the film tries to establish that the parents have to fight for survival.

Its okay for Ethan Hawke to kick the shit out of people, in a reasonably impressive action sequence, however cast a female actor like Lena Headey, who we all know is a bad ass, look at Game Of Thrones or Dredd, and for some reason she is only capable of being any use when her male counter part is occupied, its extremely boring and weak characterization.

The villains of the piece have all came out of the school of big eyes and no blinking, the 2 leaders both tilt their heads and look like someone has just inserted 5 grams of MDMA into their blood. Its not scary, you know what would be scary? If the villains were actually normal people, not rich kids with a vendetta or another bunch I wont spoil, but normal people.

Instead the film thinks that by ripping off The Strangers and giving people vicious and primal weapons, we are going to A) Give a shit about their cause and B) feel frightened by their cause. This is where the film falters the most, I just dont buy it.

The film suffers from Skyfall-itus, where unrelated events all come together, unbelievably, in a row, resulting in a film happening. Zoe's boyfriend just happens to be a psychopath who gets locked in her house, some homeless man happens to get the attention of the dumb son who opens up the security system for him, the fact that the homeless man just happens to have been followed here by a group of insane teens, who have spoke to everyone else in the area.

.. I can go on for days, but as a viewer, I was watching going, this film wouldnt even be happening if the kids had a brain cell between the 2 of them. The film looks pretty uninspiring also, when the film is lit, is bland, one note and not very interesting, when we are plunged into total darkness, the film is close to impossible to watch.

There is no detail in the darkness, it is impossible to make anything out, add in some hand held camera and this film becomes really hard to follow come the second half. Guns fly across the floor, people get murdered, faces appear from broken windows, however you need to strain your eyes to a dangerous level, in order to actually confirm what I just mentioned, actually happened.

The film has some high points, the core idea is completely approachable, it can be believed as an audience member, the core idea has some minor attention to detail that I really enjoyed, the public service announcement for example, the idea that all the houses in the area's security systems were all sold by the same man and company, these are all things that you can work with here.

The film contains a few moments, near the end, that actually get the blood pumping and when the violence hits, it actually feels desperate and unnerving. The sound work is decent enough and although there is fuck all in the way of character, the film is held together by the 2 leads.

All of this doesnt matter however, because a few good ideas cannot save a film. Look at similar films, Assault On Precinct 13, Battle Royal, these films have characters you care about, the threat feels real and those films know exactly what they want to be, The Purge just gets lost, very early on and cannot redeem itself.

It isnt scary enough to be a horror, it isnt smart enough to be a thriller, is doesnt have enough action to be and action film, it just barely pings all the genres, with no real grounding or message. The Purge will satisfy basic needs and luckily it is extremely short, but if your actually looking for something with a heartbeat maybe try a plethora of bet movies.