BEFORE: I feel like "The Purge" was the little indie action/horror film that exceeded expectations, it was made for about $3 million and grossed almost $90 million, that's a very good return - so OF COURSE they made a sequel, several in fact. That's just good business. Just like "Rocky", which was made for only $1 million and grossed $225 million, or "Napoleon Dynamite", which had a budget of just $400,000 and grossed $46 million. There are plenty of horror movies that were made on a shoestring but also brought in the green, like "Halloween", "Saw" and "The Blair Witch Project". But then those were all followed by multiple sequels with bigger budgets, and I'm assuming the franchises all had diminishing returns as time passed. They upped the budget for this first sequel to $9 million, and it brought in almost $112 million, that's nothing to be ashamed of.
Hey, I just found out that "The Purge", released in 2013, took place in the far-off future year of...2022. WOW, that's this year, it's like somehow I was meant to avoid this franchise for nine years, and then end up watching it at the exact right time. Perhaps it was the election of 2020 in which the New Founding Fathers took power in America, which means that in our reality, we've avoided the purge, we did it, we changed future history! Now, of course, we'll still need to deal with climate change, racism, anti-immigrant fervor, insurrectionists, MAGA-heads, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, hurricane season and the mid-term elections, but hey, at least we're not purging! And tonight's sequel is set in the year 2023, so there's still something for us all to look forward to, maybe.
At least two actors carry over from "The Purge", Edwin Hodge (the mysterious stranger) and Cindy Robinson, the voice of the emergency broadcast messages. There may be more...
THE PLOT: Three groups of people that are left stranded in the streets on Purge Night intertwine, trying to survive the chaos and violence that occurs.
AFTER: It can be hard to determine how seriously to take the "Purge" franchise - this movie is filled with proper action, gunfights and car chases and narrow escapes, and then at some point, for no apparent reason, in the background you'll just see bus driving through the scene, completely on fire. Well, sure, that can happen during the Purge, I suppose, but it's also a fun and funny image, and obviously somebody put it in there as a joke, a random sort of background non-sequitur, it doesn't need to be explained, it fits right in, but it's also completely ridiculous at the same time. I was just a bit suprised that the Doof Warrior from "Mad Max: Fury Road" didn't put in a cameo appearance atop the flaming bus.
Some screenwriter clearly had a lot of issues to work through, because there was some thought put into what might happen during the Purge, if it really existed. After a few Purges you'd probably realize that outside in the city at night is really not where you want to be on Purge Day, which is kind of how I feel about July 4, Halloween and New Year's Eve, every year. SO, welcome to my world, Purge deniers! That's three nights every year when I don't leave the house, and I'll have to add a fourth if this Purge thing catches on, and it's March 22, the spring solstice for some reason. Is it too cold to Purge during the winter, and too hot to Purge during the summer, or something?
In this film, everyone's trying very hard to get home before 7 pm, with good reason, only a couple's car breaks down, sabotaged by gangs, which is really dirty pool - they had to mess with the electronics of the car BEFORE the Purge started, so they could be prosecuted for property damage, and then of course that carried an intent to commit murder that took place before the official start of the Purge. I don't know what you do in that case, I guess those murders don't count? This annual event really needs some impartial judges, or a referee or something.
Meanwhile, a Latino mother and daughter suffer a home invasion from someone they know, who wants to rape them. I think the rape angle really got undersold here, most of the film gets hung up on murders, the gang-bangers want to kill people, the rich people want to kill poor people, the white people want to kill black people, the black people want to kill white people. Too much murder, not enough of the other crimes - wouldn't more satisfaction come, in a sense, from rape rather than murder? Sure, both are bad crimes, but why all the focus on murder? If all crime is legal for 12 hours, then rape is legal and if people could rape anyone without repercussions, would that be any better, or just as bad? I just know it would be super awkward, especially if the rapist and victim knew each other. It's not just rape, though, there's so many more crimes out there, and still, everybody just seems to want to kill each other. Come on, let's get creative, there's white slavery, tampering with election results, impersonating a police officer, or calling up a pizza place and ordering a bunch of pizzas sent to your friend's house. That, too, would be legal during the purge, and so would mail fraud, check kiting, and impersonating a Nigerian prince to solicit donations. Come ON, people, get creative!
Then there are hundreds of archaic and silly laws across the country, like there's no drunk skiing allowed in Wyoming, or in Maine you can't dance in a bar. Well, you can do those things doing the Purge, and I know you want to! Go crazy, defraud some investors or steal the Declaration of Independence, get creative with it! Why just limit yourself to killing, get creative with it. Our stranded motorists and potential rape victims are aided by a man who seems to know what he's doing, somebody out to kill on Purge Night who can't help but assist a few people in need who just don't have the same survival skills. And here we see another weird point, that there's no real thrill in killing a stranger, killing somebody that you know who you think deserves it seems like maybe it would be much more satisfying. Just saying.
A couple points, like what exactly are "Class 4 weapons", because they're not allowed during the Purge, and also politicians and government workers are exempt from the Purge, does that mean that they can't be targeted and killed, or that they can't participate in the killing? It's a fair question...
Anyway, that first film was so confined, so restricted by focusing just on ONE family in ONE house. It's a great, big, beautiful world of temporarily legal crime out there, and so they did a good job here of opening up the possibilities of this completely absurd situation. I love how people are all set up to kill each other, they've got each other in their sights and then at 7 am those sirens go off, and people just stop what they're doing and walk away. It reminds me of these old cartoons where Wile E. Coyote faced off against these sheepdogs (instead of his usuall nemesis, the Road Runner) and just at the moment that furious cartoon violence, a giant whistle sounds, meaning that it's quitting time, and the characters just stop what they're doing, walk over to a time-clock and punch out for the day. It's very funny because it makes no sense at all, to think that animals have working and non-working hours like humans do. (It's a cheap way to end a cartoon, but a funny one, no doubt.)
In the same manner, the Purge is over for another year, and it seems that many people accomplished what they set out to do, which I'm still not sure is a good thing or a bad thing, and maybe some people looked inside themselves and came to terms with something deep and primal inside, while other people just got dead and hey, that's good for the economy, right? So umm, yeah, there's that?
Also starring Frank Grillo (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Carmen Ejogo (last seen in "Selma"), Zach Gilford (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Kiele Sanchez (last seen in "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium"), Zoë Soul (last seen in "Prisoners"), Justina Machado (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), John Beasley (last seen in "Walking Tall"), Jack Conley (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Noel Gugliemi (last seen in "Gamer"), Castulo Guerra (last seen in "Stick"), Michael Kenneth Williams (last seen in "Snitch"), Lakeith Stanfield (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Roberta Valderrama, Niko Nicotera (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Bel Hernandez, Lily Knight (last seen in "The Singing Detective"), Jasper Cole, Brandon Keener (last seen in "Hustlers"), Amy Price-Francis, Vick Sabitjian, Wiley B. Oscar, Nicholas Gonzalez, Chad Morgan, Judith McConnell (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Dale Dye, Stephen Brown, Jeremy Fitzgerald, Jessica McClain, Joe Ochman (last heard in "Ernest & Celestine"), Mike Jerome Putnam with a cameo from Nathan Clarkson (also carrying over from "The Purge"), Tyler Osterkamp (ditto)
RATING: 6 out of 10 auction bids
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