Poorly Executed Popcorn Piece

Rating: 4/10 (2 January 2018)

The basic idea of 'The Purge' is not too bad and, in a better film, would have been entertaining and interesting to watch. Sadly 'The Purge' is not that film. The home invasion thriller genre may have been done to death but it's still a personal favourite of mine. Home invasions always seem scary no matter how many times you've seen it before but the main feeling 'The Purge' leaves you is not terror or tension but a lack of belief and mild boredom.
Although it contains a few good sequences 'The Purge' is generally poorly executed. Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey do their best to ham things up but the script itself is poorly written. We are asked to believe in and root for the characters but they make so many stupid decisions each and every scene that it's hard to like them, or even dislike them. Instead I just didn't care. Their emotions too seem almost always out of kilter with the events of the preceding film, a problem that hardly helps to build tension for the situation.
Much of any home invasion film's tension derives from the characters making use of their house and its space but in 'The Purge' the house seems inordinately large, even for a rich family in the suburbs. Throughout the film I felt myself asking the question, how big is this house? I know American houses are large but is it really this big?
'Purge's' other main problem is its message. Instead of subtly posing questions and answers or calling our attention to the real life social implications of the film's basic premise writer-director James DeMonaco decides to hit you over the head repeatedly with a large brick from the very opening of the film.