The Purge sports one of the boldest concepts you're likely to find in a thriller, one that dares to explore in rather grisly fashion a subject that has only become more prominent thanks to our current political climate. In the year 2022, Americans are allowed one day a year when penalties for all violent crime have been waived. Assault, murder, rape, it's all free game for one 12-hour period, as long as government officials are left out of harm's way. The bizarre experiment was cooked up, ironically, as a means of reducing crime by wiping out those who are considered leeches on society, and with unemployment non-existent and the crime rate at 1%, it's an unquestioned success.
It's an intriguing, premise rife with political subtext, perfect for the brilliant minds over at Blumhouse Productions (the folks behind Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and Sinister) to build yet another dominant horror franchise around. But for now they're not willing to fully embrace the concept, using it as window dressing for what is an unsettling, if conventional home invasion flick.
After starring in two horror films for the studio in just the last couple of years, Ethan Hawke has become the Jimmy Stewart to Blumhouse's Alfred Hitchcock. He's the everyman hero and father-figure again here, playing the head of the wealthy Sandin family, who along with his wife (Game of Thrones' Lena Headey) and two kids live in a gated community where the effects of the Purge can rarely reach them. He's a seller of top-flight security systems, and sales are booming thanks to the yearly bloodletting, a fact which has rubbed some in their neighborhood the wrong way. The Sandins plan to stay inside, bolt down windows and doors, and watch the massacres on television from the comfort of their living room. Like any sane family would, right?
There's just one little problem. Their son gets caught up in his feelings and allows in a homeless man looking for sanctuary from a pack of spoiled, murderous rich kids in masks ripped straight from The Strangers. Their leader (Rhys Wakefield), a smarmy chap with the false civility of a hunter who knows his prey is helpless, demands the Sandins kick the man back out into the street where he can be properly disposed of.
Because this story needs a hero, the Sandins obviously decide to fight back, right? Well...it's not that cut and dried, which is why The Purge is better than typical films in the genre. This is class warfare at its most barbaric, and the Sandins are hardly saints in this struggle. The film suggests that we're all savages by nature, and the Sandins fight to control that side of themselves just like everybody else. But on this one day where it's perfectly fine to cut loose, do they give in to their primal urges? The social and economic divide comes in that the poor don't have the same luxury of choice. They are victims and nothing more, with even their basic right to life stolen away by the whims of the wealthy. The elite have their own tribal concerns to deal with, as well, because jealousy and personal vendetta are as valid a reason for murder as anything else.
Writer/director James DeMonaco kicks around a lot of great, subversive ideas and the opening montage of grainy nationwide violence is a superb primer for what this franchise could be. Imagine The Purge's premise taken to a much bigger level, possibly international? How would a holiday like this be different in a place like Russia or China? The concept is so rich that the potential of it is mouth-watering. So in that sense it's a little disappointing that this film centers on one single family's experience, but at the same time watching the Sandins fight for their lives while trying to keep their "souls" is gripping stuff. Hawke and Headey are terrific as parents who are perhaps suppressing their own cravings for the sake of their kids, and finding that decision could be a fatal one. The Purge has more big ideas than big scares, and that's actually one of the reasons why it works. It forces you to think how you would react if placed in the same terrible circumstances.
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