The fear of random violence is unfortunately an increasingly
valid concern. Over the last year and a half alone we have had a string of
unwarranted mass shootings and even public locations like movie theaters have
become a place of paranoia. Human nature is a mystery and we can never know
how, when, or where someone will snap and make news in their community. So what
does it mean that a science fiction thriller about the legalization of murder
has come out in theaters this summer?
“The
Purge” deliberately aims to address these current social phobias; the fear of
being indiscriminately attacked, the fear that we can never truly know the
innocents of others or even ourselves in extreme situations, and the fear of
the widening gap between the super-rich and hopelessly poor. It’s a thematically ambitious genre movie but
it never quite lives up to the promise of its premise.
In
2022, in order to solve America’s problems with violence and the overpopulation
of prisons, once a year, observed as a dystopian holiday known as “The Purge”,
all crime becomes legal for twelve hours. Ethan Hawke plays James Sandin, a
wealthy executive who sells state-of-the-art home security systems. Under the
safety of his latest security invention, he and his family plan on staying indoors
to watch satellite footage of the purge on TV while the mayhem ensues in the
streets.
Not long
into the night, their perimeters becomes compromised when a vengeful boyfriend
of their daughter reveals his presence in the house and their youngest son
decides to let in a homeless man from outside, who was begging for refuge. This act of kindness attracts a viscous pack
of young one-percenters who then threaten to kill Sandin and his entire family
if they don’t give up their stowaway.
There are
a lot of great ideas in “The Purge” and I commend writer/director James
DeMonaco for trying to be timely and relevant. However, while he is more than ready
to charge toward his themes, once he has arrived to them he barely scratches
the surface of their potential. We are told that for twelve hours all crime is legal
everywhere, but we never really get a full sense of the scale and anarchy of
the purge. We never really get a full
sense of what led our county to sanction something as seemingly ridiculous as
this, and most importantly, we never get a very complicated moral argument from
this entire set up.
Obviously
this is supposed to be a dark satire of our current economic issues in social
disparity and it’s in its obviousness where the movies problems reside.
DeMonaco’s soap box is often so elevated that while he is busy preaching he
forgets to deliver the genre goods. As a
home-invader thriller it doesn’t stack up against many of the movies it
evokes—“The Strangers”, “Last House on the Left”, “Funny Games”, “A Clockwork
Orange”—and that eventually cripples this film as it gradually relies more and
more on traditions and clichés.
The
performances too are awfully broad and simplistic. The bad guys are cartoonish,
mustache-twirling, cackling hyena’s and as our main characters are put into
harder, more compromising positions their emotional arcs never seem to naturally
evolve. Instead it always feels that
they are only responding what the script is telling them to do.
“The
Purge” isn’t an altogether bad movie but isn’t really a satisfying movie
either. It’s economically made and it has a thought provoking conceit but as
soon as your thoughts are provoked it never leads to anything as interesting as
its premise suggests. As a horror film it isn’t that scary and as science
fiction it isn’t that smart and while it plays its game adequately enough to be
passable I couldn’t help but lament for all its bland failings.
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/June-2013
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