Review of The Purge (2013) by Keenan S — 31 Jan 2015

The Purge sure is a strange film. It's a mix of social commentary, satire, horror, thriller, suspense, and dystopian science-fiction. Sometimes the film becomes muddled in its messages and sometimes it can be a bit preachy, but I rather enjoyed this strange film. It's a lurid, blood-soaked, suspenseful, darkly funny, and overall great trash film of our times, hopefully destined to a future status of cult classic.

The film is set in the year 2022 and things in America are now radically different after the N.F.F.A. (New Founding Fathers Of America) passed the 28th amendment, which allows for virtually crime to be legal for a 12 hour period one night of the year. The only exceptions are that Class 10 politicians cannot be harmed and that Class 4 weapons are prohibited. Other than that, anyone is free to kill and destroy as they please. Anyone who doesn't wish to participate should remain in their homes with a proper security system to keep them safe. During this period, police, fire, and medical services are unavailable.

Thanks to this law, things seem to be better as unemployment is now at 1% and there is virtually no crime anymore outside of this particular day.

The film focuses on the wealthy Sandin family, headed by James, who is a security system salesman who has had his best sales yet this year, which has allowed new renovations to the family home, much to the jealousy of their neighbors. He has a loving wife and two children, though his son, Charlie, seems to be against this particular day, and his daughter, Zoey, is secretly seeing her boyfriend on this night .

The family gets ready to bunker down for the night by arming their security system and assumes that things will go smoothly with this new security system protecting them. However, things go slightly amiss when Zoey's boyfriend stayed secretly in the house with the intent to have a talk with Zoey's father about their relationship, which she is uneasy about.

Things go truly bad, however, when Charlie, while watching security monitors, sees a man out on the streets calling for help. Against better judgment, Charlie momentarily disables the security system to let the man in the house, much to the horror of his parents.

When the man gets in the house, James holds him hostage at gunpoint, unsure of what to do with him. Things only get worse when Zoey's boyfriend pops out of hiding to have his "talk" with James by trying to shoot him, which results in a brief exchange of gunfire that gravely injures the boyfriend, and the unknown man runs off and hides somewhere in the house.

And, just when the family hoped things couldn't get any worse, a group of masked people participating in the event show up on their doorstep demanding the man be sent back outside to be killed, or else they will break into the house and kill everyone inside if the family fails to meet the timed deadline.

Though they had remained largely ignorant to the horrors of this event, this night will give the family a first-hand taste of the ugliest aspects of human nature, as well as tough moral decisions.

The story is certainly an oddity filled with many intriguing ideas. One of the core concepts is its social commentary about social classes in America, especially between the rich and the poor. It's also a commentary about our love of violence as a species in some form or another, and that there is some level of violence hidden in everyone when provoked. With this social commentary, comes interesting pitch-black satirical humor that is quite funny.

However, these social commentaries sometimes become muddled as the film sometimes just feels more like a trashy slasher film, rather than something trying to be more profound with its thoughts. Sometimes, the ideas feel undercooked, but they are still fairly well done and interesting.

The story also does a good job of blending horror with home invasion thriller, and while it's not as good as You're Next or Straw Dogs (1971 version specifically, though I do have a soft spot for the 2011 remake), it still does an admirable job at horror and thriller.

The acting is also quite good, especially from Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, and the underrated performance of Rhys Wakefield as the strange and lurid villain in the film. The actors as a whole are pretty good, though sometimes the script causes their performances to veer directly into cheesy territory (Though, to be fair, this is pretty standard in horror films).

As far as entertainment goes, it gave me a wealth of things to enjoy as a lover of horror, thriller, trash, the weird, and as a gorehound. It's a blood-soaked, suspenseful, eerie, and darkly funny thrill ride. The film also does a good job of building things up before truly exploding, resulting in an ass-kicking climax that is a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

The Purge is an underrated film, but I think in future years it will get better appreciation. If you enjoy weird, trashy horror films, The Purge may offer something you'll like, especially as a horror film that is more ambitious than most others. I had a blast with it.