Happy Hunting
The H-Bomb: The date is March 21, 2023, and it’s that time of year again, time for the annual “Purge;” the night where all laws and emergency services are suspended for twelve hours, and all crime, including murder, is legal. Enacted by the New Founding Fathers of America, the Purge is designed to allow citizens to vent any pent up anger and aggression, thus lowering the overall crime and poverty rates. According to statistics, it seems to work, though it does raise some rather pesky moral and ethical concerns. Since the lower classes are typically the ones victimized the most by the Purge, the validity of said statistics is questionable.
Nevertheless, the Purge must go on, and just as this year’s is about to commence, married couple Shane (Zach Gilford) and Liz (Kiel Sanchez) are in the middle of talking divorce, when their car breaks down in downtown L.A. Since they have no weapons, and are being stalked by a pack of punks in scary masks, Liz and Shane try to high tail it to safety on foot, which will prove to be easier said than done. Downtown is practically ground zero for the Purge, after all, so unless they find help soon, they’re pretty much cooked.
Meanwhile, waitress Eva (Carmen Ejogo) and her teenage daughter, Cali (Zoe Soul) plan on spending the evening holed up in their apartment, with only a measly 9mm for protection. Unfortunately, their little girls night in is ruined by a gang of intruders, who force them to flee the safety of their apartment. Lastly, there is Sergeant (Frank Grillo), a black clad badass armed to the teeth, who plans on doing a little purging of his own tonight… for personal reasons.
Eventually, circumstances bring all five of our disparate heroes together, as they are forced to fend off street gangs, snipers, paramilitary death squads, and some creep-o with a patriotic baseball cap and a mounted machine gun, in order to survive the night. God bless America…
2013’s The Purge was a film that left me wanting. Writer/director James DeMonaco certainly had a cool concept, but the movie itself was little more than a standard home invasion thriller, underscored with some half-assed social commentary. With his follow up, The Purge: Anarchy, DeMonaco finally delivers a movie that lives up to his killer premise. I’m completely speculating here, but I get the feeling that the original Purge was merely a made-on-the-cheap calling card movie, that the film that DeMonaco really wanted to make all along was this one.
Again, I could be totally wrong, but either way, I went into this with the lowest expectations possible, only to emerge from the theater in a state of shock, from completely having my ass handed to me by what has to be the meanest motherfucker of a motion picture I have seen in a good long while. The Purge: Anarchy is an hour and forty minutes of sheer, stomach twisting intensity. The other night, a friend of mine asked me if this is Dredd 3D awesome, and having paid the matter much thought, I must say, in answer to his query… yeah, pretty much. Seriously. The Purge: Anarchy is that fucking awesome.
Whereas in the first film, we only heard about the chaos going on outside, this time we are dropped right smack in the middle of it. The action unfolds entirely on the streets, where we see the Purge happening all around; masked thugs traveling in packs with machetes and Rottweilers, hapless fools being beaten and shot in the gutter, and the mysterious giant trucks roaming about, bringing death wherever they go. DeMonaco unflinchingly captures this atmosphere of pure chaos, where even the Droogs from A Clockwork Orange would shit their pants in terror. If the Purge were real, this is exactly what it would look like… and it ain’t fuckin’ pretty.
At the center of this government sanctioned insanity are our five protagonists, who we get to know well enough before hand to know that they’re decent people, who don’t deserve to die at the hands of bloodthirsty strangers. Far too often in horror films, the lead characters are so thinly defined, or so obnoxious, that we don’t care what happens to them. Here, we know these people, we like these people, and that’s why we’re terrified for them. When they walk into a booby trap, or get chased down a tunnel by flamethrower wielding madmen, we are on the edge of our seats. The horrors these people encounter are non-stop to the point of being almost unbearable. I kid thee not, this thing is a relentless roller coaster of carnage.
Much of the fear and intensity generated in the film comes from the actors, and everyone is first rate. Every single actor, from the hunters and the prey on the streets, to the well-to-do cretins who buy their victims and have them delivered to their doorsteps, every one of them seems one hundred percent authentic. Special mention, however, must go to Grillo as Sergeant, a dyed-in-the-wool ass-kicker who hasn’t quite lost his humanity. This dude is a natural born action star, and if we ever get another Punisher reboot, he should be first in line for the role. Hell, his character in this practically is the Punisher, anyway. Overall, the acting as a whole is a vast upgrade from the first movie.
In fact, I’d say The Purge: Anarchy improves on the original film in just about every way imaginable. Last time I felt entirely underwhelmed, this time, I was completely immersed in DeMonaco’s terrifying dystopia. If you saw the first Purge and didn’t like it, I implore you, give this one a chance. This is the movie that the original should have been. Granted, it’s no Oscar contender, but it’s not intended be. I’d say the political subtext is handled about as clumsily as it was in the first film, with echoes of Hunger Games-like revolution thrown in half-heartedly. But thinking about it, that’s really the only issue I had. That slight grievance aside, I got nothing but praise. The Purge: Anarchy is brutal, visceral, disturbing as hell… and in case you haven’t caught on yet, I kind of loved it.
