K-SCORE: 15
Writer/Director: James DeMonaco
Starring: Frank Grillo, Elizabeth Mitchell, Mykelti Williamson, Edwin Hodge, Liza Colon-Zayas
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“In this one, a few girls even deck out their sedan in Christmas lights to maximize their chances of getting shot down and run over with ease.”
Throughout your time reading this review, I want you to remember that this film was written and directed by this man here:
Every year The Purge franchise gets better on one spectrum, worse on another, and stays exactly the same on a third. What is consistent is it has one of the least tenable, most absurd, most mind-numbingly stupid premises I’ve ever encountered. The Purge: Election Year answers none of the questions I’ve posed in the past about the practical application of making “all crime” legal for a single night. Take a look at these reviews if you’re interested in some of those questions. The Purge and The Purge: Anarchy. This entry actually poses some new questions because a group of foreigners travel to the US to participate in our Purge and kill Americans. So let’s add:
Is just any foreigner allowed to come and purge or are there restrictions on foreign purgers?
Is it legal for foreigners to steal our assets on purge night and take them back to their home nation?
Are you allowed to bring arms to the US from another nation for purge night?
If not, can you traffic weapons across the border specifically on purge night?
Do you have to have a purge visa to purge or can you just be a foreign worker or tourist to start purging?
If a particular nation were to take a thousand soldiers and bring them to the US and then institute a hostile takeover of government buildings, is that an act of war?
Can foreigners abduct US citizens on purge night and take them across borders without any legal repercussions or are they guilty of human trafficking as soon as the night ends?
Are immigrants who cross into the US on purge night, under what normally would be illegal circumstances, granted amnesty at sunrise?
That’s just for starters. The Purge: Election Year also mentions purgation insurance, which brings up even more questions:
Does the insurance cover loss of life or just loss or property? Are their different purge packages? Just how high are these premiums? Is there a copay to claims? How can you make that copay if you died on purge night?
Is insurance fraud legal on purge night such that you could actually purchase a nice purge plan and then destroy all your shit and kill your family and then file a claim without any consequences?
Is it legal for insurance companies to delete their records of those they’re insuring on purge night thereby always avoiding paying their clients claims?
With this ridiculous head-scratcher of a premise comes a consistent failure in tactics on the part of all the characters. The protagonists are a senator and her protection team and they are culpable of scary amounts of negligence to the point where I’m surprised she wasn’t killed on just some regular day. After a narrow escape, they seek shelter in a convenient store and the head of security starts arguing about politeness with the armed store owner that they don’t know. But especially with the villains comes a dedication to standing/dancing/gloating in the street in masks or skimpy outfits, shining lights on themselves as if they are immune to dying on purge night. In this one, a few girls even deck out their sedan in Christmas lights to maximize their chances of getting shot down and run over with ease. People that would do a better job of surviving and thriving on purge night include: the homeless, the mentally handicapped, the kid from Home Alone, people who start out the night trapped in one of Jigsaw’s puzzles, and people who somehow missed all the news about the purge and start out thinking it’s just another night.
But all this is expected at this point, and none of it captures what it’s actually like continuing to watch this horrible excuse for action/horror. This movie is better in the way that it actually follows characters that affect the policy of The Purge and there are characters with motivations beyond purge, be purged, or survive the would-be purging of others. Not many, and they’re all idiots, but a few. Such direction makes for a much better, more linear story.
That said, this is my least favorite of the films. A huge amount of the screen time is not spent on purging at all, but rather on the most shallow brand of social justice politics and economic misconception out there. The low quality of this commentary is not surprising considering the stupidity inherent to the premise and present in the first two films, but creator James DeMonaco goes a few steps further well into the realm of overt racism. Mykelti Williamson’s lines are almost all framed in some racial context, even when he’s just pointing out the obvious like, “Look at these negroes over here.” At the end he says, “I like black people, but you can’t kill these white people. These are our white people.” DeMonaco’s vision of the country is so blind and polarized he would have us believe that everything is divided along racial lines. Even the good blacks and Mexicans used to be criminals. And white people can be divided into two categories: the 2% that get it and want to help and the 98% that are rich, religious, and literally want to ritualistically murder the poor for their own personal gain. The mercenaries trying to kill the hero senator wear swastikas as part of their purge assault team uniform. The Christians in the film use purge killings to be born again and their ceremonies are distinctly KKK like.
The only thing that the characters universally agree upon is a mistaken notion of fixed-pot economics, that is to say that there is a set amount of wealth in the country and people in power divide it. An easily disprovable fallacy. Even accepting that mistaken notion, it still wouldn’t make sense societally for the rich to want to kill the poor so they “don’t have to pay their healthcare and housing.” In fact, it’s tough to make any kind of pro-purge economic argument when such wanton destruction is obviously so costly. DeMonaco spends most of the film feeding the ignorant propaganda to generate further hatred and anger along lines of race and socio-economic status. It’s gross, offensive to me, and ethically abhorrent.
I enjoyed watching the first Purge because it’s so stupid it’s funny and it sparks all these weird conversations with my friends and brothers, but I think partly I enjoyed it because I thought, surely, no one could take this seriously. Then I saw kids in Baltimore rioting wearing purge masks and passing around messages on their social media pages about how they were going to purge the police, and it soured me some. Now I think it’s time we stand up for sanity and reason and stop giving this moronic, racist, douchebag money to make movies.