"Tonight, we'll see the good and evil in everyone."
I always feel like ‘The Purge’ movies represent a severe
waste of potential. In an age where several genre movies have proven themselves
as intriguing social allegories ‘The Purge’ continues to boast the most surface
level, thinly conceived philosophical underpinnings of any popular movie of
late. It’s concept is played too seriously with too little substance to be
treated as anything that could be called enjoyable, but at the same time the
movies insist upon their own significance so much that they ruin any dramatic
impact they could potentially hold. Anyway, here’s another one.
To push the crime rate below one percent for the rest of the
year, the New Founding Fathers of America test a sociological theory that vents
aggression for one night in one isolated community. But when the violence of
oppressors meets the rage of the others, the contagion will explode from the
trial-city borders and spread across the nation.
“So, you know when the purge started did people get into it
right away or were they more like ‘Wait, what? This is gonna stop crime how
exactly?’” – Morty Smith.
If I do possess any level of intrigue over ‘The Purge’ as a franchise,
it would be to try and answer that question posed in ‘Rick and Morty’. It’s not
that the premise and concept that drives ‘The Purge’ is ludicrous, it’s that
the franchises are always caught in this awkward middle ground of wanting to
explain their own mythology and treating their central concept as a genuine
ideology, whilst also aiming for the lowest common denominator of action
cinema. They want to convey the illusion of containing socially relevant themes
without putting any actual effort into developing those themes which as it
turns out don’t exist in the first place.
There’s also a real sense of cognitive dissonance in how
these movies discuss and present violence. On the one hand everything about the
narrative and characters seems built to convey the idea that the concept of the
purge is fundamentally flawed and need to end. But then at the same time they
revel in the bloodshed and violence to a degree that feels like they are
indulging the very characteristic they want to preach against. The desire for
violence is an eternal paradox that three separate movies, now four, have yet
to escape from.
You can find the same confused morals in ‘The First Purge’,
with even the basic premise being a confused and pointless foundation. So the
film attempts to rationalise this first purge as being an experiment, something
that was only introduced in one area and then presumably spread as a nationally
accepted concept. So this limits the scope of ‘The First Purge’ to a single
island. The contradiction however, comes when you realise that no other ‘Purge’
film has reached beyond a single group of characters or environment. None of
these films have explored any wider context for the Purge as a concept so there’s
still no point in trying to rationalise it as having a cohesive origin. Once
again, either lean into the over the top insanity or make more of an effort to
work as a compelling film, don’t fall awkwardly in between.
If it sounds like I’m
talking at length about the concepts around ‘The First Purge’ rather than the
actual film, that would be due to how the premise itself is still the most interesting
thing within this movie by a wide margin. As a movie ‘The First Purge’ is
another cheap, slightly exploitative, thinly drawn and hardly cohesive
action/thriller. The action itself has little weight or meaning to it, once
again creating an approach to action that is at odds with its own narrative.
Much like the citizens who inhabit this world I almost found myself numbed to
the carnage as it unfolded, with what should be a gripping and exhilarating
third act instead being dreary and uninspired.
This movie even follows the pattern of having its
protagonist be portrayed by an actor that feels so much better than the film he
finds himself in. With ‘The Purge’ we had Ethan Hawke evoking some level of
empathy and its two sequels had Frnk Grillo providing a manic intensity that
seemed to realise what tone would be best suited to these films. Once again the
lead role, in this case Y’lan Noel is surprisingly compelling as a protagonist.
The character he portrays is confusingly written both in terms of
characteristics and moral motive. But Noel’s portrayal sells each conflicting
aspect of the character, and makes it all the more disappointing that the
screenplay couldn’t make its mind up regarding what the character should
actually be.
In fact I don’t think screenplay knows what it wants to be
in general. I’ve already referenced the movie’s moral confusion at length but
even on a momentary basis ‘The First Purge’ undermines it’s own established
tone at every opportunity. Horrifically violent scenes can be playing out and a
character will randomly spout a painfully obvious one liner. Some action
sequences are grotesquely intense and others are laughably over the top. There isn’t
a single aspect of the movie where the script doesn’t feel at odds with itself.
Shallow, uninteresting and tonally confused, its business as
usual for ‘The Purge’ franchise.
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