Bad From Start to Finish

Rating: 2/10 (7 June 2013)

I had the unfortunate pleasure of getting to see the movie "The Purge" at the 10 O'clock premiere last night. To be honest, going into it, I didn't expect much. I didn't really know a lot about the film aside from seeing a couple trailers here and there and hearing customers blabber on about how excited they were for this movie (I work at a movie theater). I guess the concept sounded kind of interesting, and really, I just felt like seeing a movie I hadn't seen yet. My expectations were blown away; the movie was worse than I had originally assumed. "The Purge" pretty much just stinks from beginning to end. However, it does have a few slightly redeeming factors.
Okay, I lied. "The Purge" has only one redeeming factor; and it's how hilariously bad the dialog is. As soon as the movie starts and we are introduced to Ethan Hawke driving in his car, talking on the phone. Right off the bat I could tell that the script for this movie was really poorly written. All the lines sound incredibly forced and unrealistic. For example, when Ethan Hawke first arrives home he says something along the lines of "Hey, hey! what a long day at work!". All of the characters, especially Ethan Hawke's character, say things one would never say in real life. This is the one good(ish) thing about this movie. How hilariously terrible the dialog is. I was laughing pretty much throughout, at just about every line. Now, to be fair, other things may have influenced my laughter, or intensified it, rather. But overall the dialog is just completely unrealistic. Realism. That is my biggest issue with this movie: it's lack of realism.
Let us begin with perhaps the most painfully unrealistic part of "The Purge": the plot. The idea behind this whole futuristic America is that the Economy is down and Crime is up. It is just universally accepted that the cause of all these problems is built up aggression within the human population. In order to correct this, the United States Government decides that it would be a good idea to give the public a day to "release the aggression". So, one day of each year, they will have an annual "Purge" where all crime is legal (including murder. They put a lot of emphasis on murder being legal). Somehow, magically, this does help the Economy and Crime overall is down for the rest of the year. Because if people get out all that anger in one day, they will not feel the need to commit any more crimes for the rest of the year.. (yeah.. right..) I'm calling bull sh*t on this one. This would never EVER never ever ever work or even be considered in real life. I understand that not all movies need to be realistic to be good, but this movie is kind of trying to go for a realistic feel. It's clearly not supposed to be a Sci Fi film.
Now, not only is the dialog bad in "The Purge", but so are the characters. The main characters throughout the movie consistently make stupid decisions and totally change their opinions in the blink of an eye. But the worst characters of them all have got to be "the bad guys". I'm gonna call them "the bad guys" because there were a lot of them, and I don't remember their names if they were even given. Without spoiling anything (if you still want to see the movie) at one point there is a group of people that approach the house to terrorize Ethan Hawke and his family. This group is heavily armed and set on killing off the filth of society or "the swine" as their leader constantly calls them.(He also uses words like "tootaloo" and "folks") For no particular reason they all wear clown masks, dresses, suits, etc. They jump around, act goofy, scream, laugh and play on swing sets... I think this was all meant to make the movie a bit more creepy and eerie, but it just felt forced and left me cringing throughout. There was nothing to justify why they were acting like circus performers.
The ending was disappointing. There are numerous moral issues brought up throughout the film. None of them are solved. In the end, some people die, some people live, and it's just over. It's almost like James DeMonaco just gave up, and couldn't figure out how to end the movie in a decent way. So he just threw together a little stupid humorous bit at the end. I suppose this is to be expected with James DeMonaco though. Pretty much every project he has ever touched has been bad.
"The Purge" is not at all worth seeing. It's not scary. It's not suspenseful. It's not realistic. It's not well written. It's not anything. It's just terrible.