American Nightmare

I am a movie theatre employee, so I saw this film last night at an employee screening. Going into the movie, I was rather excited. The concept is interesting, and has never been done before. While this movie was not as scary as I had anticipated, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. The antagonists were disturbing, and the movie really shows the struggle between self-preservation and what's right. It is somewhat short, but the makers certainly do get the job done. Plenty of flashlight-and-pistol standoffs and suspenseful scenes make for a movie with an interesting plot, and good acting. The ending was a bit predictable, but did not ruin the movie in my opinion. Not the best that I've seen, but overall a decent flick.

The Purge (2013)

Well, this is either the stupidist movie ever or it's a mishmash of something audacious and creative and a slasher film with campy expectations. It doesn't make the grade as a great movie mostly because of an hour of redundant ax-wielding around a big suburban house. But the first half hour is really great—some potential here that went aground fast.

The premise is clear right away: it's the near future, maybe 2021, in the United States. Once a year for twelve hours everyone is allowed to be an ultra criminal without repercussion. None. Kind of like Devil's Night in Detroit without any cops. You can murder, destroy things, be a general naughty boy or girl, and have no criminal consequences the next day. Hurray!

Everything is just okay! Or not.

Well, the reason this works in the first half hour is the calm, steady, well appointed believablility of the acting and scenario in this fancy (upscale American) house. Ethan Hawke plays a great regular, successful, nice Dad. His wife (Lena Headey) is a sweetheart in the clichéd way (she is sadly the typical Hollywood female, incompetent but nice to have around). They have two children in the standard mode, talented and slightly disaffected.

So 7pm rolls around and the family has a fortress of a house (steel doors drop down in front of the windows and doors). So they watch on their monitors the calm and then the lack of calm on the nice street outside, at night. And things go sour badly.

Okay, so a great set up. Of course, if you think about it, it's about as believable as zombies. And so therefore you can go with it if you decide to. So the public can expunge their violence by killing a few people and the other 364 days are crime free. Great. Except, well, uh, really?? Yeah, it implies that we would kill without compunction, and that the next day you would walk by your neighbor, who just killed a few people during the Purge, and say, "Good morning Mrs. Johnson," as if all was fine. And there is no guilt. Or feeling. Or morality.

But that's if you think about it. A lot of Hollywood's idea of the future is not meant to be parsed out and logical. Look at "The Giver," or even (yes) "Avatar." Etc.

So on a simpler level we have the problem of a movie that turns into a slasher film. Because the bad people do, of course, get into the house (you saw that coming) and the family tries to defend itself. This part of the movie is not especially well made, or well acted, or original. It destroys all potential, and makes it a disturbing bore.

I watched this movie against my better judgement. Most of the reviews on IMDb rate this movie somewhere between awful and horrible. I was hoping that maybe they were being too harsh, they were not. I made the mistake of thinking that Lena Headey and Ethan Hawke were both credible actors. (I love Headey as the evil queen in Game of Thrones) whoever wrote her dialog in this mess should be drawn and quartered. By the end of this movie I was actually hoping that the "good guys" would get killed just to keep them from having to suffer this script anymore.

All in all this is a bad movie, don't waste your money or your time watching it. Trust me you'll thank me in the end.

Humans have a natural instinct as predators to kill, but society forces us to repress these feelings by living in a ''civilized'' way....according to new Ethan Hawke led film The Purge, a very interesting concept of a film, which explores a future society in which all crime is allowed for one night a year...

It's 2022 (not actually that far away), and unemployment in America is 1%, crime is at an all-time low, and generally, everybody seems happy, especially James Sandin (Hawke), a rich citizen who makes his fortune selling security systems for houses to use during the annual Purge. Basically the reason why unemployment and crime is so low is because, for one night a year, a Purge occurs, where all crime (murder, raper robbery, the whole lot) is made legal, and no police or emergency services are allowed to interfere. Mad. But also intriguing. James and his family happily avoid the Purge by using a security system outside their large house while the rest of society kills each other, but all that changes when their youngest son Charlie decides to let a stranger into the house......

This starts off as a really captivating film, the concept of legal crime kept me hooked, but soon enough, it descends into a stereotypical action film where Ethan Hawke fights off gangs from his house with a variety of handguns,and all originality gets lost in a haze of bullets (literally). The short running time (85mins) and variety of twists every 5 minutes makes sure that it doesn't get too boring, so overall a decent watch, but nothing that provokes any thinking afterwards.

6/10- A lesser version of Panic Room

The Purge (2013)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Annoying, dumb and eventually cruel film dealing with the one day of the year when America allows you to kill anyone who want without being punished. This "purge" is supported by a security system seller (Ethan Hawke) and his wife (Lena Headey) but during the 12-hour period they find themselves the target of a gang of murderers. THE PURGE pretty much gave away its story during the theatrical trailer and I thought to myself that we were going to get something fresh or something that has a few interesting ideas but just didn't work. Sadly there are some interesting ideas floating around but the screenplay is simply so bad and so clichéd that it pretty much kills anything positive. The biggest problem is that the film is never scary, which is just downright disappointing. Another problem is that the film itself doesn't know what to do with its "free day to kill" idea. It takes a while for the viewer to warm up to this futuristic world where we can kill but as soon as you accept this "law" the screenplay then pulls a quick one and starts to challenge the morals of such a thing. We then get a bunch of political non-sense thrown in just to make us question the whole thing. Why sell a film on an idea and then not know where to get with it? Even more annoying is that this film contains some of the dumbest and most annoying characters in the history of cinema. Yes, the history of cinema. The couple's young son is someone I wanted to be off the screen ASAP. The daughter isn't much better but just wait until the two twists that happen. Both Hawke and Headey give good performances as does the rest of the cast. If you're expecting a horror film then you're going to be disappointed because even though there's quite a bit of violence, for the most part this is nothing more than a rip-off of STRAW DOGS but set in the future with this one "change." Sadly, THE PURGE just never works and in the end you're left with a major disappointment and just a cheap excuse to kill.