Review of The Purge: Election Year (2016) by Jesse O — 28 Oct 2016

You know, I remember when the first Purge movie came out and how great the concepts was versus the actual film that we got. For one, I never thought that the Purge was a bad movie at all. It would have been better received if it had just been a straight-up home invasion thriller, which is how it played out.

But when you had the concept of this being a government approved night where all crime, including murder, is legal for 12 hours, it should have been a more interesting movie than what it actually was.

They made the right decision by releasing a sequel the next year, Anarchy, that explored some more of its themes and the people behind this annual purging that, mostly, targets those people with lower income, since they cannot protect themselves as well as those who are more affluent.

And the film, while having some horror elements for sure, was more of an action film. I still felt they didn't go as far as they could have with some of its themes and ideas, but I was quite entertained by Anarchy and how it improved upon a really cool concept.

Which brings us to the third, and seemingly last, Purge movie. This movie goes even deeper than the first two flicks, where now the New Founding Fathers are a heavily focused on as the main villains. They were always the main villains, but they've been more overseers in previous films, they aren't actively involved in what's going on in the prequels.

Basically, the New Founding Fathers, referred to as NFFA here, are in an election year and the president of the US, an NFFA minister, is up against a senator, survivor of a purger who killed her entire family, that threatens to destroy everything they've worked so hard to build.

So, for the first time ever since the purge began, the NFFA has removed the immunity that protected the government, so this way they can kill Senator Roan to keep their stranglehold on the future of America.

But, on the other hand, there's this protest group, who wishes to murder the NFFA during their mass, this big get-together every Purge where they kill an innocent person as a sacrifice, to ensure that Roan wins the election.

So there's various plot points at play and on top of that there's just the general Purge with people doing horrible shit to each other. While I only gave this 3 stars, I actually really liked this movie.

It's obviously very over-the-top, the NFFA are incredibly absurd villains if you really look at it objectively. But this type of film requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. There's no fucking way an organization like the NFFA would ever gain any actual footing in the political landscape of the US, despite some of the more fringe Trump supporters wanting it to be that way.

But it's cool to see a scenario where they are the leading political party in the US. And it's also cool to see these assholes get theirs. So it works sort of as wish-fulfillment, in spite of the lack of realism to everything that's going on.

Is the film as thought-provoking as it probably should be? No, not really. I think the problem with that is that it's not a very subtle movie. Everything is pretty much black and white. Senator Roan is perfect and she will bring about change to this country.

The NFFA are the nefarious villains who are willing to do absolutely anything and everything to keep their way of life intact. That may sound like a complaint, but it's really not. The movie, in spite of it all, really aims to be more like escapist entertainment than anything else.

Yes, it has some really interesting themes, but the movie gives its audience what they want. It's not torture porn, because they've built up the NFFA over three movies now and they've made them the big bad of the entire franchise, so seeing them finally get a taste of their own medicine is incredibly satisfying for those of us who have watched every single movie.

The acting is also more than solid. Frank Grillo is a good actor and he plays his part very well. Elizabeth Mitchell is also good as well. That's the thing, in spite of it all, the movie has some good actors at work here.

Mykelti Williamson is damn good here as well. If there's one thing I can't complain about, it's the cast. They are all very solid here. Is this the last Purge movie? I don't know, it really seems to be by the result of the presidential election which, ***SPOILERS***, Roan won.

And her first course of action is to get rid of the Purge, her entire campaign was built on that. I suppose they could maybe squeeze out one more movie out of this concept, but I don't know what else they CAN do that they haven't already.

It's possible they make another one, considering the fact that this was the most commercially successful Purge movie yet. Though I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it is 2016 and we're in an election year with two of the most controversial presidential candidates in recent history.

The film's promotion was also pretty clever too, with the Keep America Great line used as a jab at Donald Trump's slogan, so I felt that that also had something to do with it. The only way it could have been more perfectly timed was if it was actually released in theaters the Friday before the presidential elections.

Which would have just happened to be next Friday, at the time I wrote this review at least. I guess they couldn't hold off that long, huh? With that said, this is about on the same level as Anarchy, maybe slightly better, and it's considerably better than the first movie.

So, yea, I really enjoyed this. It's a fun genre flick and I would certainly recommend it if you've been keeping up with the franchise.