Mark Reviews Movies: THE FIRST PURGE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 3, 2018

When The Purge was released five years ago, it was almost impossible to imagine that its sequels would gradually become some of the most explicitly political of modern mainstream movies. The politics were there in the 2013 original, as the U.S. government continued an annual tradition of a 12-hour period of lawlessness, but the motives behind the policy—to decrease the population of the lower socioeconomic classes—were left to be deciphered. With The First Purge, the fourth entry in the series, any subtlety of intent has been thrown out the window.

The same could have been said of the previous movie The Purge: Election Year, which was released in 2016, in the midst of the most contentious election cycle in memory. That didn't help the second sequel, because it felt too broad in its political observations at a time when there were some very specific problems with the candidate who would go on to win. The screenplay for this fourth installment, written by James DeMonaco (who wrote and directed all three of the previous movies), wants to catch up to the politics of the present by going back to the series' past.

At first, the movie seems like a straightforward rehash of its predecessors, with a group of people fearing and then trying to survive within the chaos of a lawless night. Then, there's a moment when the reality of this world sets in.

Our heroine, an anti-Purge protest leader, is caught in a snare and dragged toward some freaks hiding in the sewer. A hand of one of the men reaches up toward her, and the camera lingers on where it lands on her body. The sexual assault turns out to be an elaborate setup for a pointed, throwaway punch line. She frees herself, and as she runs away, our protagonist references the candid words of that real-world candidate-turned-President. On Purge Night, there are no consequences to grabbing a woman by that area—just as there are, apparently, no consequences in American politics to admitting to such behavior.

Yes, the series, which previously examined contemporary politics in general terms, has become quite specific with this installment. There are moments ripped, as they say, from the headlines, including a gang of neo-Nazis carrying torches, men wearing KKK hoods and Confederate flag patches appearing in plain sight, and a mass murder unfolding within a predominantly African-American church. This is quite possibly the most daring entry in the series in the way it directly references real-world events. Then again, the earlier movies only had to deal with a right-wing nationalist in control of the U.S. government within the confines of its own world. A lot can change in five years.

The big question, then, is whether or not this explicit aping of reality has a point beyond appearing topical. It does, but the answer is rather unfortunate. DeMonaco and director Gerard McMurray mainly exploit these real-world parallels for cheap thrills. Like all of the sequels in this series, the movie offers sequence after sequence of chases, sieges, and standoffs, all of them punctuated by graphic violence. We've seen all of this before, and the inclusion of the bitter taste of reality only makes it, well, taste bitterer.

The story is set in the near future, as the New Founding Fathers of America win the Presidency (with the financial help of a certain "gun rights" organization) and push forth legislation to try a social experiment on Staten Island. The experiment, as we know by now, is a 12-hour period in which all crime, including murder, is legal, allowing its participants to purge violent feelings without consequence.

The central heroes are drug kingpin Dmitri (Y'lan Noel), anti-Purge leader Nya (Lex Scott Davis), and Nya's younger brother Isaiah (Joivan Wade). Dmitri stays in the neighborhood to protect his business. Nya remains to get as many people as she can into the sanctuary of a local church, and Isaiah sticks around to get revenge on Skeletor (Rotimi Paul), a monster of a drug addict who's looking forward to the upcoming carnage. Meanwhile, the party's mouthpiece (played by Patch Darragh) and Dr. Updale (Marisa Tomei, almost admirably showing her boredom with the role), a psychologist who came up with the experiment, watch from a safe distance.

Despite the real-life parallels, there's basically nothing new here, except the notion that this policy only works when the right-wing government gets its own hands bloody with the aid of its hateful, fanatical base. The First Purge is an angry, violence-fueled reaction to contemporary politics, but it's far too familiar and exploitative to offer its own sense of catharsis.

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