‘The Forever Purge’ is a Modern Dystopian Nightmare

June 30, 2021

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The Forever Purge (CREDIT: Universal Pictures/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, Josh Lucas, Cassidy Freeman, Leven Rabin, Alejandro Edda, Will Patton

Director: Evarardo Gout

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rating: R for Sniveling, Racist, Terroristic Violence

Release Date: July 2, 2021 (Theaters)

I thought we were done with The Purge. With the 2016 release of The Purge: Election Year, a new administration ascended and officially ended the annual night of state-sanctioned lawlessness. But horror franchises never say die, so this one went the prequel route with 2018’s The First Purge. There was also a two-season TV series that debuted that same year, which I watched one episode of. As far as I know, it has little, if any, bearing on the movies. Now all the legal crime’s been reinstated in The Forever Purge, and as the title indicates, there’s a contingent intent on it never ending. But after such a satisfying conclusion in Election Year, that’s such a depressing prospect to me. So pretty much the only way I can find The Forever Purge palatable is by pretending that it’s essentially a standalone entry, so that’s what I’ll do.

It’s not too hard to pull off this mental trick, as Forever carries over no characters from any previous entries (save for the ever-present specter of the “New Founding Fathers of America” regime that conceived of The Purge in the first place). This time around we’re in Texas, with a white ranch-owning family and a Mexican family that works on the ranch as our requisite set of people who would prefer to barricade themselves up during this here Purge, thank you very much. (Josh Lucas’s Dylan Tucker, the biggest jackass of these clans, has the most selfish reason for opposing this ritual, as he declares, “I hate the damn Purge. It’s just hard to be social on that night.”) Then there are the truly demented forever purgers, among the most thoroughly evil caricatures of any good grindhouse flick.

After living through a pandemic and its attendant heightened anxiety, I’m not exactly in the mood for the 24/7 terror promised by The Forever Purge. Hell, I’m not usually ever in the mood for that, but at least when the earlier Purge editions came out, they felt much further removed from reality than they do now. But insurrectionists demanding that the government make their already-extreme policies even more extreme is very much a part of recent American history. At least The Forever Purge allows for some catharsis by making it very clear that it is on the side of the systemically downtrodden. This has always been an “eat the rich” franchise, and this time that’s clearer than ever, what with the villains aiming to essentially start a race war. In conclusion, I can’t remember any other mainstream film in my lifetime basically saying “Maybe Mexico is a better place to live than America right now,” so I have to applaud The Forever Purge‘s gumption and conviction.

The Forever Purge is Recommended If You Like: Revisiting a nightmare world

Grade: 3 out of 5 Purges

This Is a Movie Review: The First Purge

July 6, 2018

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CREDIT: Universal Pictures

I give The First Purge 3 out of 5 New Founding Fathers: https://uinterview.com/reviews/movies/the-first-purge-movie-review-themes-have-never-been-clearer-but-storytelling-has-rarely-been-weaker/

This Is A Movie Review: The Purge: Anarchy

August 11, 2014

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THE-PURGE-ANARCHY-1

The first Purge (2013) had an intriguing (albeit patently ridiculous) premise: what if all crime were legal for one annual 12-hour period?  As that movie and its sequel, The Purge: Anarchy, would have it, this tradition has reduced all crime for the rest of the year and unemployment to negligible levels.  It is never clear how those results are effected, but that is besides the point.  The premise is just an excuse to create a horrific landscape of lawlessness.  The first Purge squandered that opportunity by limiting itself to a typical home-invasion flick.  This sequel, which is essentially a do-over, has the right idea by setting its protagonists loose on the streets of Los Angeles the night of the Purge, but its execution is lacking.

The thing is, a B-movie that runs about an hour and a half is always going to have to ultimately limit its focus, even when its premise suggests a context with a much wider scope.  Anarchy, like its predecessor, offers an intriguing milieu, with a strange cult-like adoration of the “New Founding Fathers of America” regime and the inevitable class warfare.  But the actual characters that the narrative follows do not offer much in the way of exploration of these themes, and the casting does little to help.  Frank Grillo provides decent screen presence as a police sergeant apparently seeking vengeance for the events of a previous Purge.  Carmen Ejogo and Zoë Soul, as a persecuted mother-daughter duo, are too thinly sketched to be memorable for the right reasons and too adequate to be memorable for the wrong reasons.  Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez struggle to elevate the typical horror roles of a couple who make dumb decisions and give us little reason to sympathize with them.

Anarchy only comes alive when the electric Michael K. Williams appears intermittently as the leader of an anti-Purge resistance group.  His fight-the-real-enemy ethos kicks the proceedings into the gear of a thematic focus that the rest of the film sorely lacks. C+