Standard home invasion movie with a gimmick

Rating: 4/10 (16 July 2014)

The plot of all crime is legal for 12 hours once a year, so America gets its violence out of its system is a fantastic gimmick that is at once subversive and darkly comic. Unfortunately this is a low budget cheapie that ignores its own premise and turns into a standard home invasion flick that falls victim to the standard tropes associated with these types of films. It tosses out any wit for one dimensional characters making fatally stupid decisions that makes you want to reach through the screen to slap them repeatedly. The only real element of the premise that survives is a ticking clock gimmick, so our dimwit main characters just need to survive for X amount of more time. The Purge is a frustrating film that doesn't deliver and wastes an interesting idea.