Review of The Purge: Anarchy (2014) by Khaleesi — 07 Aug 2014

I went into The Purge: Anarchy expecting mindless entertainment, nothing deep or Oscar worthy. I really liked the first Purge movie. I think the concept is very interesting. However, this one felt like they tried way too hard to make a deeper meaning and emotional connection.

Firstly, the characters in this movie are AWFUL. I really, really disliked all of them. They aren't bad people, but they are very fake people. They try to seem sympathetic and take some moral high-road, but it just comes off as staged.

I was really hoping about 20 minutes into the film that everyone would die. The "twist" to the movie is that the government is now killing people during the purge because citizens aren't doing a good enough job at controlling the population.

Why a government would want population control was never elaborated on. Maybe they wanted to decrease their tax base?It's really obvious that this is what is going on from very early on. However, the makers of this movie think their audience is completely stupid and continually threw out "hints" about the twist and then in the very end let the government guy have a whole monologue explaining his devious plans.

I actually laughed because I was like- DUH! Jeez. I am actually writing this review to try and get the attention of the people who are going to make The Purge 3. Dear whoever you are: if you want to have character development or a story about a specific character stick to one and don't try to give us equal half-stories about 20 of the characters.

Also, no one thinks this should be a horror film. Inserting random scenes to make people jump is super lame. Stick to the good thing about this series and that is the premise and the crazy ways people think of to kill one another.