The First Purge

The characters are underdeveloped and the acting is bad, which made me indifferent whether they survived or not. There is no real suspense, only random action scenes. Lastly, the "scientific layer" they tried to add, and the stereotypes, are just insulting to the viewer.

This fourth installment in the fascinating, but flawed dystopian franchise, does succeed in begin exciting and never boring, but as with the prior films remains a disappointment considering the awesome and frightening premiss. However, in this film's favor, it does fill in some of the logic gaps of the previous films, answering some persistent lingering questions in this prequel of the first ever limited Purge on Staton Island, Are people really so depraved to go on killing rampages one day a year? How could the economy and crime rates improve as a result of a yearly purge? Who would benefit from such an event? Much is explained in this installment. The totalitarian New Founding Fathers need this first purge to be a success, so when the brown and poverty stricken residents of Staten Island don't riot and kill, they send in a Blackwater type of group to make sure there are plenty of killings in hopes of turning citizens against one another. When the leader of the Blackwater group is a dead ringer or Ronny Regan, it's not hard to guess where this film's politics lie and the filmmakers opinion of our current president and his divisive style of politics for personal enrichment (At one point, the heroine refers to one of her attackers as a "pussy-grabber," a pretty direct Trump reference.). As with the other films, this one follows a disparate group of folks trying to survive the 12-hour Purge, primarily an anti-purge activist and a community minded drug kingpin. The downside to this film is similar to the others, in that there is not a lot of character development and despite a strong film concept and story set-up, the film quickly devolves into a series of action set pieces. I found this to be the weakest of the series when it came to action and suspense, but it's likely the strongest when it comes to better fleshing out the politics and the logic behind the purge. I'm also disappointed that the series is straying pretty significantly from it's horror roots in the first film and is more and more becoming an urban action film series. The first two films did an excellent job of conveying the frightening anarchy of the purge (the first film was a straight-up horror home invasion story), but subsequent films has felt more action oriented. I much preferred the uncompromising horror of the first films, which seemed to delve more into the darkness of human nature, even if the logic of the purge was less intelligible. Series creator James DeMonaco is only the writer this time and leaves the directing duties to Gerard McMurray, who does a serviceable job, but this film felt less apocalyptic and less surreal than the prior films, somewhat to it's detriment. After having watched this film and having started watching the 10 episode TV event, I think The Purge series needs to either become more political (which this film did more so) or more focused on simply presenting interesting scenarios and chaos (which the TV show is doing more of), but I keep feeling like there's not enough of either in any of these films.

It really is a shame they have ruined these films, by far the worst one they have made. The first 3 are amazing but I wouldn't waste my time or money watching this again. 1 local drug dealer takes on and beats the whole.

It's a dreadful bore, with poor writing, and an incredibly forced depiction of the Black side of this fictional movement. Everything the film tries to start anew feels so out of place and none of it amounts to anything remotely interesting, while everything else feels like a forced tie in product to the other films before it, never directly addressing them, but largely relying on similar setups and situations that the other ones have already dealt with. The acting is incredibly over the top, the screenplay even more so, never knowing what it quite wants to be or wants to say. The direction is harsh, the tone and look of the film bleak, and it never decides on whether it wants to be a trip to empowerment or a social commentary, both of which the film pulls off poorly. The music is forced, the characters thin, and I can't think of many things positive about the film besides potential that the film so poorly executed. In the end, The First Purge is not only a pointless sequel, but a truly lackluster film, with no agenda but to accumulate some more money for this seemingly never ending franchise. My Rating: 2.5/10

It's not a terrible film, but also not a great film. Go in expecting the same as the last two films (not the first film, that was a completely different type of movie)