A Primeira Noite de Crime

What I loved about the Purge series is how it focused on the darker side of humanity. No one was able to be viewed as a "good guy" because, given the right circumstances, we all harbor terrible passions that can be let out if allowed. In this movie, they show "how it all started" but in doing so, they couldnt help but pander to a certain group of people who want to make all white people evil and all black and poor people victims. Even the black gangsters who routinely kill and spread evil over the world end up being shown as "true heroes". Why does everything have to be "this group is good, this group is bad"? There are good and bad in ALL groups and that is what made Purge so awesome. I doubt I will watch any more of these films. Trust Hollywood elite to ruin a good thing because they cant keep their opinions to themselves.

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.

I've said since day one that The Purge is an incredible concept which positively reeks of potential. I love the idea and there is so much that could done with it, but the moment the first film revealed itself as yet another home invasion movie my belief that Hollywood could do it justice diminished.

Now here we are with the 4th movie and a prequel no less, they've had 5yrs to think about the concept and what they could do with it. So why is this latest offering the worst?

You know what it reminds me of? Attack the Block (2011), that awful British sci-fi movie about aliens that attack a council estate. So we have the absolute scum of the Earth as our protagonists and I'm supposed to cheer them on? Absolutely not.

The First Purge does the same thing, our "Heroes" are drug dealers, weapons merchants etc who I simply cannot get behind. If a movie has no real protagonists it's DOA for me.

Full of the usual fantastic social commentary, incredible aspects of the Purge concept but once again a weak delivery. For the fourth time the concept feels wasted and instead we're subjected to another brainless action flick.

The more I think about the concept however the more I question whether it can be done justice. Surely there is someone out there who can do something with it?

So in conclusion, The First Purge is the worst Purge.

The Good:

Lex Scott Davis

Every aspect that embraces the concept

The Bad:

Some wretched characters

Stock scream

Awful soundtrack

Ending is ridiculous

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.

Many of these IMDb users are hatin' on this movie simply because they look at that screen and don't see faces/characters/situations that they can relate to. That's fine because that's going to be true for most audiences, but by no means does that make this a bad movie. It just means this movie wasn't made for them.

It was made for people who can relate to the obvious real-life metaphors this film hits on: financial desperation, a scarily-real governmental turn toward autocracy under-girded by racism and exploitation of the urban poor, and the unpredictable spasms of people who REALLY ARE losing it in these tumultuous times.

The plot and story are no less solid than the simplicity of the other films: a menagerie of characters looking to survive the night, with their own agendas, despite structural forces at work against and unknown to them.

Yet, what mass American audience wants to identify with a drug-dealer-turned-urban-Rambo in the main action hero Dmitri (Y'lan Noel)? The catharsis of all movies (but especially dystopian films because of the creepy sub-textual realism) is in getting absorbed emotionally into relatable characters. Most audiences can't relate to Dmitri or Nya (Lex Scott Davis). Those familiar with the hood can; or at least those that can imagine that perspective.

In that sense, The First Purge veers toward Blaxploitation, and it's un-apologetic about it. Yet the sight of Neo-Nazis going door-to-door in legal extermination IS actually terrifying as real-life white supremacists emboldenment across the country is encouraged by autocratic fervor.

As far as dystopian sci-fi goes, we're far closer to that possibility than most audiences want or can imagine. That's part of what makes this film compelling if not technically as slick as the others (which IS admittedly disappointing given a bigger budget than the last).

The last film, Election Year began the politics of the series; with upwards of $80 million gross on a $10 million budget, a politics most audiences had little problem with.

This film is a logical (in a prequel kind of way) next step in the obvious political turn the series took in the last film, only the perspective turns the lens primarily on the plight of the urban poor and criminally enterprising and those in power manipulating things behind the scenes. As for the hood perspective, you're not seeing "bad acting" as some users have accused. It's acting and being that doesn't give a s#!% what outsiders of the hood perspective think.

If you want to see credibly-creepy dystopian fair that's all-too-close to home--and if you're willing to identify with life on the other side of the tracks--this movie is worth a look, but don't expect the stylistic slickness of the other films.

The First Purge is very low-fi compared to the others, but that doesn't make it low-worth. Only those who can't wipe away their lenses for a couple of hours would think that of an otherwise solid movie.