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The Purge Movie Review

The Purge is a 2013 dystopian horror film directed by James DeMonaco and starring Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey. It’s a disappointing genre flick.

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“We are gonna play the rest of this night out in motherfucking peace.

Does anyone have a problem with that?“

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The members of a wealthy family find themselves in trouble when they are held hostage by a murderer during the Purge, a period where all criminal activity is legalized. First off, the premise behind this movie and the entire franchise that spawned from it was superb. It’s a high-concept dystopian SF idea through which you can explore the gun control issue in America and all these interesting themes regarding violence and how society deals with it.

Unfortunately, this movie failed to explore any of these themes properly. They were there, but only barely. The end product is a messy horror feature that failed to make proper use of its premise as the execution was very mediocre.

My main issue here was its refusal to go fully into examining these issues and its SF concept. In fact, it actually ignored its basic concept as it in the second half went fully into your standard home invasion tropes. These elements were reasonably entertaining for sure, but hardly original as so many other horror flicks did them much more effectively.

Lena Headey and Ethan Hawke were both quite good here, but unfortunately their characters were underdeveloped. Others fared even worse as the invaders were thoroughly underutilized and they felt like one-note villains with no backstory to speak of. Much stronger characterization was needed in this instance to make audiences care for what happens to these people.

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The Purge had a couple of very well executed action sequences and solid acting and score, but overall the production design, cinematography and directing were nothing to write home about. The beginning worked for me, but everything else that came afterward was totally uninspired, though it might be serviceable for genre fans. It spawned an entire franchise, but it was just not good in the first place.