Director: James DeMonaco

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Edwin Hodge, Tony Oller

“One night a year, all crime is legal.”

A delicious, socially-satirical premise reminiscent of Paul Verhoeven’s dystopian visions isn’t enough to save this dumb, frustrating thriller from it’s many pitfalls.

Set in the year 2020, The Purge follows the story of a regular, affluent family, who barricade themselves in their home in preparation for one government-sanctioned night that legalises all crimes, known colloquially as ‘the purge’. But when their well-intentioned son raises the shutters to provide shelter for a distressed homeless black man, it attracts the unwanted attention of a gang of crazed vigilantes.

The premise is simple and effective, but it unfortunately doesn’t make a lot of sense. How did an entire country embrace this idea without public backlash and resistance? Did something happen that changed the country’s attitude to crime? We don’t know, and The Purge can’t really be bothered to explain. The vast array of problems with the plot only escalate from there.

None of the characters have any redeeming moments, or make any decisions that the audience can relate to at all. As the lunatics get nearer their goal of breaching the home, our family (led by Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey) become utter morons with absolutely no common sense at all.

If they stopped and took inventory of their situation for a couple of seconds, they would realise a few things. They have plenty of guns. They have three able-bodied adults and two children willing to defend themselves. They have a large, unlit house full of labyrinthine corridors they know better than anybody. And finally – most importantly – they hold the element of surprise, because the invaders will be the ones who have to enter into the dark house while their would-be victims lay in wait, shooting them from the shadows.

The fact that there is only a handful of masked lunatics should mean the dispatching of them as they enter the house would be a piece of piss, but unfortunately Hawke and Headey, the worst crime fighting duo of them all, just stroll around getting pounced on by attackers.

You’d also think that being the catalyst for all the events of the film, the rescued stranger would be fleshed out into a complicated protagonist, but he remains an undeveloped enigma for the entire film. It feels forced that he’s not only a racial minority but also a war veteran, as if you’re expected to root for him by default instead of the filmmakers having to worry about all that pesky ‘character development’ stuff. There’s inherently something unsupportable about a white upper class family feeding an innocent black man to a rabid crowd of white hipsters, and writer/director James DeMonaco knows it.

The invaders themselves are caricatured comic book villains too, literally skipping around hand-in-hand in their excitement to do a bit of murder. They are simply ruthless, demented madmen (and women) acting with un-relatable motives – as opposed to misguidedly angry citizens, which would have led to greater moral implications for fighting back against them. It would be different if the ‘purgers’ were perhaps unhappy about killing but did it for the betterment of society or something, rather than these clearly psychopathic fuckers who love a bit of killing.

There are many opportunities for the social satire to be delved deeper into, but this disappointing by-the-numbers home invasion bollocks does little to explore them. The Purge is a diluted bore masquerading as a smart thriller, and if you have even half a handful of brain cells it will do nothing but frustrate you.

1/5