Review of The Purge: Anarchy (2014) by James R — 22 May 2015

Wasn't expecting much coming into this one and yeah it was about what I figured it would be. The Purge: Anarchy is a sequel to the first Purge (2013) film, but this time instead of focusing on just a single house this film expands the whole Purge by following a group of people surviving getting through an entire city.

Just like in the previous film there is a day once a year where all crime is legal. You can murder, rob, etc. and not get in trouble. It supposedly has brought the crime rate down and people live in relative peace.

We follow Shane (Zach Gilford) and his wife Liz (Kiele Sanchez) who's car breaks down right before the purge and are being pursued by masked men. Eva (Carmen Ejogo) and her daughter Cali (Zoe Soul) are two women who are taken from their apartment complex and brought before a man named Big Daddy (Jack Conley) to be killed.

Then theres Sergeant (Frank Grillo) a man on a quest for revenge, but becomes the reluctant hero when he saves Eva and Cali and allows Shane and Liz to travel with them all. Together they maneuver themselves through the city following Sergeant to his ultimate goal.

Overall, I found this one not as gory as the first film, but it also has zero to no character development. I didn't care about any of the characters and by the end there were two or three I didn't mind killing off.

Sergeant is easily the coolest person in the group, but we get to know little to nothing about him. There's very few jumps in the film and I wouldn't consider it a horror film, but a thriller.

There's some decent sequences involving chases and action, but some scenes are so dark that its hard to decipher what's going on. Overall, this is a bad one and I recommend a skip!