a_chinn Review of The First Purge

The First Purge (2018)

Weakest of The Purge films, but it remains a flawed but fascinating franchise

[6/10 · 1 October 2018]

This fourth installment in the fascinating, but flawed dystopian franchise, does succeed in begin exciting and never boring, but as with the prior films remains a disappointment considering the awesome and frightening premiss. However, in this film's favor, it does fill in some of the logic gaps of the previous films, answering some persistent lingering questions in this prequel of the first ever limited Purge on Staton Island, Are people really so depraved to go on killing rampages one day a year? How could the economy and crime rates improve as a result of a yearly purge? Who would benefit from such an event? Much is explained in this installment. The totalitarian New Founding Fathers need this first purge to be a success, so when the brown and poverty stricken residents of Staten Island don't riot and kill, they send in a Blackwater type of group to make sure there are plenty of killings in hopes of turning citizens against one another. When the leader of the Blackwater group is a dead ringer or Ronny Regan, it's not hard to guess where this film's politics lie and the filmmakers opinion of our current president and his divisive style of politics for personal enrichment (At one point, the heroine refers to one of her attackers as a "pussy-grabber," a pretty direct Trump reference.). As with the other films, this one follows a disparate group of folks trying to survive the 12-hour Purge, primarily an anti-purge activist and a community minded drug kingpin. The downside to this film is similar to the others, in that there is not a lot of character development and despite a strong film concept and story set-up, the film quickly devolves into a series of action set pieces. I found this to be the weakest of the series when it came to action and suspense, but it's likely the strongest when it comes to better fleshing out the politics and the logic behind the purge. I'm also disappointed that the series is straying pretty significantly from it's horror roots in the first film and is more and more becoming an urban action film series. The first two films did an excellent job of conveying the frightening anarchy of the purge (the first film was a straight-up horror home invasion story), but subsequent films has felt more action oriented. I much preferred the uncompromising horror of the first films, which seemed to delve more into the darkness of human nature, even if the logic of the purge was less intelligible. Series creator James DeMonaco is only the writer this time and leaves the directing duties to Gerard McMurray, who does a serviceable job, but this film felt less apocalyptic and less surreal than the prior films, somewhat to it's detriment. After having watched this film and having started watching the 10 episode TV event, I think The Purge series needs to either become more political (which this film did more so) or more focused on simply presenting interesting scenarios and chaos (which the TV show is doing more of), but I keep feeling like there's not enough of either in any of these films.