Not very interesting

Rating: 4/10 (3 December 2013)

Having heard many positive reviews of the Purge I watched it expecting it to be a fairly straight forward family in peril fighting for their lives type movie, something along the lines of panic room. What took me aback about half way in as I got up to get a drink without bothering to pause it, was that it was actually rather boring. Let me break it down into the good the bad and the ugly.
On the positive side, the premise is interesting. Once a year the government suspends all law allowing people to murder rape steal and pillage. (makes you wonder if the insurance companies have anti-purge clauses like the current anti-terrorism clauses) A little background exposition via your friendly neighborhood TV set leads us to wonder if the purge really is for the mental health of the people allowing them to release pent up aggression and violence legally or if it is all an economic ploy to get rid of the poor and sell security systems, guns, and weapons to those who can afford it.
Also on a good note, the character of Charlie was interesting. He did seem morally conflicted about their lifestyle and the plight of the less fortunate and his spy camera doll was one creepy little critter, ingenious really.
Sadly we must now go to the bad. Other than the smallest glimmer from Charlie, the characters were totally unlikable. You don't get to know the homeless bloody stranger well enough to know if he is interesting or not. He just doesn't have many lines or many scenes revealing his character's personality or humanity. The father is a jerk who only shows a few redeeming characteristics way too far into the movie to make a difference. The mother is about as deep as a blow up kiddie pool. The daughter is supposed to be a moody angsty teen in lust with an older boy but again they just kind of throw all that out in a few expository lines from mom and dad. The neighbors are almost Stepford Wives creepy from the first time you meet them yet not really as creepy as the central family. There is also not one spark between any two characters in the entire movie. The parents don't even seem to like each other, let alone love each other. There is no feeling of warmth between either of them and the children, or between the siblings. Even when the daughter is fooling around with her boyfriend Henry, she seems about as engaged as someone watching the paint on the ceiling dry. The movie was also boring visually. Most of it takes place in what looks like a enormous rich house on the outside and looks like any boring suburban split level on the inside. Even the art on the wall and the furniture arrangements were so very, very middle class that the very idea of the neighbors feeling that they were uppity, just fell flat.
And now the ugly, and by that I mean the atrocious acting. The characters are flatter than a pancake, played with a sort of listless boredom that infects the viewer as well. The father comes across as plastic, the mother as bored. The daughter is completely unrealistic as a teen as is her boyfriend. The neighbors and the gang of rich thugs were as overblown and cliché as actors in a parody. They had no place in a serious movie at all. The acting was honestly about what you would expect in a high school play. I except the characters of Charlie and the bloody stranger from this criticism. Charlie seemed rather distant, but there seemed to be some potential there and the stranger as stated before wasn't on screen enough to judge. He seemed a fairly competent actor when he was so I suspect he may actually have some talent.
This movie was a complete and total waste of time. Most of the action is just gun shots in a dark room and over acting thugs. The characters are too poorly played to bring any drama into the script. I am not sure who failed this movie, the director, the casting company, the actors themselves.... but this movie as a whole fails completely. It is not entertaining.