The First Purge
You may recall that I was not a big fan of James DeMonaco’s 2013 thriller, “The Purge,” which set up a dystopian future where, one night for 12 hours, all crime is legal. It is intended as a cleansing for a country on the verge of chaos. I really liked this premise, but DeMonaco’s first film in the series basically turned into “Panic Room,” while losing much of the idea’s satirical bite. I still have not seen DeMonaco’s “Anarchy” from 2014 and “Election Day” from 2016, but my wife (who has seen all of them) was interested in seeing “The First Purge,” and honestly, I was, as well. This is definitely an improvement on that first film.
DeMonaco’s script, directed here by Gerard McMurray (a producer on “Fruitvale Station”), envisions a time where increased violence, and a volatile economy, has brought out the worst in America, and we get a third party in the New Founding Fathers of America party that harnesses the rage simmering as a way to be swept into office. One of the ideas they have been swept in on was the idea of The Purge Experiment, where crime is legal for 12 hours, including and up to murder, so that maybe the citizenry’s aggression can be purged, and a peace can take hold over the remainder of the year. This first experiment will take place on Staten Island, New York, where the low-income population of (largely) minorities is thought to be a solid test subject for the NFFA to try this idea. They are offering money to those who are willing to have their movements tracked, and recorded, for the evening. Lines are drawn within the population, and the NFFA (and country) is watching intensely to see if the experiment with legalized lawlessness as a way of purging our anger will be successful or not.
This film cuts a bit close to the bone when it comes to the social commentary in DeMonaco’s screenplay for the film to really remain something simply entertaining, but honestly, that’s part of why I think the film works the way it does. Yeah, the film really keeps racial tensions, and the underlying racism of the NFFA’s idea, pretty close to the surface, but McMurray takes it seriously enough to make it count while also giving in to the franchise’s twisted exploitation energy as a dystopian nightmare scenario. He’s good with action beats and sequences, and he knows how to keep characters the focal point of the story. This isn’t really a film where performances stand out, but the characters we come to know matter to us, and that’s the most important thing for a film like this; keep us engaged enough to go with the story, while making that story interesting enough to immerse us in this world.
I’m curious to see if the “Purge” franchise is continued from this point forward. It’s very likely, since I can’t imagine this costs that much to produce, and financially, they should be doing fine. At the same time, this is a series that shines a little too close a light at the world we live in now, and I wonder whether that might make it too uncomfortable for audiences moving forward. Now that DeMonaco has really found the central ideas of the series, though, maybe he can get a bit closer in on specific moments- as he did in the first one- while also aiming a larger lens on the society that permits such a thing to take place. We’ll see what happens from here.
