The purging continues as Universal delivers a sequel to a film few actually liked in the first place. But hey, it’s cheap to make and they may be able to dupe just enough people into thinking The Purge: Anarchy will be any better than the first… it isn’t. It’s worse. The only way they might have made a better movie would have been to set the film the day after the last one, sorting through the pain, emotions and overall aftermath of all the killing, but that would require tact and thought rather than speed and simplicity, allowing them to churn out another one just over a year after the first hit the big screens. As a result, the annual Purge is once again upon us, sound the horn and prepare for tedium.
In the year 2023 the “New Founding Fathers” of the United States of America once again invite the citizens of the country to “release the beast” for one 12-hour period where crime is legal, including murder. The result of such a night is said to be the reason crime rates are down and there is a greater economic balance among the people. Of course, it’s largely the lower class participating in the Purge and rich folks are actually paying for lower class citizens to come to their house and let them kill them or kidnapping them for “the most dangerous game” scenarios. I guess it’s better than sending your sick grandma to a nursing home… right? No? Okay, my bad.
So as the nightly news counts down to the start of the Purge and before the horn finally sounds we’re introduced to a Eva (Carmen Ejogo) and her daughter (Zoë Soul), a man we’ll only come to know as “sergeant” (Frank Grillo) and a warring couple (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) on the brink of divorce. This group will eventually come together through a variety of circumstances that have them on the streets during this night of madness rather than locked away safely in their homes.
So while the first one kept the focus on one family and only telling us of what is taking place downtown, the second believes what’s just as interesting are the people being killed all over the city while attempting to add enough wrinkles to keep the franchise breathing for yet another installment a year down the line.
This includes government participation in the Purge wherein giant semi trucks scour the city filled with an army of soldiers that bust into apartment buildings in the poorer parts of the city, kill people inside and then bring a couple out of the building so a man dressed as a butcher can shoot them with his high-powered Gatling gun. Essentially the government now acts as if they were cast in an Eli Roth film.
The other new wrinkle, and the one I just know franchise writer/director James DeMonaco thinks is so clever, is the introduction of a faction led by Michael K. Williams rising up (cue the film’s subtitle) against the “New Founding Fathers”, declaring the Purge to be an abomination. They do this by killing people themselves, which is either meant to be ironic or something else altogether, but what I can tell you is it’s dull.
Beyond all the stupid decisions made in the film — the moment Eva falls down while being chased and is unable to stand up for what feels like an eternity and the sheer stupidity of the film’s ending — what bothers me the most is what appears to be DeMonaco’s belief that the only intrigue in this story is surviving the night. In his mind, surviving the night means everything is okay for another 364 days when it all happens again. He’s either unaware or unwilling to face the world he’s created, which actually could be quite interesting while still delivering on the violence and threat of violence he so desperately wants to tap into.
At the end of the film, five people have their guns aimed at one another in a standoff when the horn sounding the end of the Purge blasts. They all drop their weapons and my audience laughed. Yes, over the course of the last 90 or so minutes we’ve watched as people killed each other with no thought of consequences or morality. Yet now, only seconds after the horn we go back to being respectful citizens? Okay, fine, but that’s where this premise finds intrigue.
Following this sequence we see the city on fire and hear news reports of death and destruction everywhere (really top notch journalism there), but either DeMonaco is uninterested in the aftermath or unable to competently delve into the horrors of such a scenario. So thousands of people have just been killed, the streets are littered with bodies and blood, buildings are burning and the world simply… goes on?
Sorry, watching people run for their lives in a world with no consequences doesn’t interest me. Especially when the premise essentially sells me on a world heading toward that of The Road Warrior only to be told it reverts back to some sort of utopia once the Purge comes to an end. I hate to put it so bluntly, but it’s stupid and the level of thought put into it is minimal at best.
