A Preachy "Panic Room"

Rating: 4/10 (7 October 2013)

I came into this movie knowing two things: the plot was original/intriguing and Ethan Hawke did a good job with Gattaca (another low budget sci-fi) in 1997. Unfortunately, James DeMonaco is no Andrew Niccol, and The Purge was a tremendous waste of potential.
The setting is the not-too-distant future, in an affluent, Stepford- style neighborhood. Following what we assume to be a second American revolution, there is an annual "Purge" that allows people to commit all manner of crimes as long as it is not against the highest ranking government officials and as long as it is using weapons below a certain grade (i.e. you can't nuke the White House and get away with it). The effects have been dramatically lower crime and unemployment rates since the dredges of society are being removed from an increasingly efficient system.
From the beginning, it is the character development that limited this movie's delivery. The protagonist, Ethan Hawke's character, sells security systems for a living, has a quiet wife, a loner son, and a hormonal teenage daughter. These pieces scream typecasting, so you can't really blame the formulaic acting since the actors did exactly what the script told them to do. From the beginning, you know that the wife will have to challenge her husband on a moral issue (in order to exert her female independence), the son will have some profound affect on everyone (because all sociopaths are secretly geniuses), and the girl will be responsible for something going wrong (because she's an irresponsible teenager).
Besides the predictable character development, we're also stuck hearing all these mannequins preach to us about social equality as if we, the viewers, really believed genocide was a good idea. The second you see an African-American male appear you suspect immediately he'll end up saving the world, because.. well, you know.. he's supposed to do that in this kind of movie. Even so, you can't be sure because there are a couple of plot twists that keep you wondering more than just how long the movie is.
The movie isn't only frustrating because of its failed potential, but also because the plot development relies on the stupidity of its characters. The father is pretty careless about his security system on the only night of the year when murder is legal, the son makes several dumb mistakes that make you want to climb into the screen and hit him, and the daughter, of course, lives up to her potential as a trouble- making teenage trollop. All in all, it's a worst case series of events that occur on the most dangerous night of the year in a part of town that is never subjected to Purge-related activity.
It gets 4 stars for the originality of the plot, the use of a moderately talented and relative unknown actor for the lead bad guy, and killing off a main character.