Begins promising, however progresses downhill rapidly.

Rating: 5/10 (5 June 2013)

The Purge is set in the near-future. Where crime is at an all-time low and unemployment is at 1%. This is due to the annual purge in which all emergency services are shut down and American's are granted the freedom to commit any crime to anyone for 12 hours. A family, who does not participate, must come to terms with their own morality as they allow a homeless man into their home, it just happens that a local group of people who target one person and kill him, are after him and provide the family with an ultimatum: All of them, or just the stranger.
The Purge stars Ethan Hawke, Lena Heady, Max Burkholder and Adelaide Kane and is written and directed by James DeMonaco.
To be honest, I found the concept of The Purge to be incredibly absurd. However, I felt it contained potential in terms of maybe portraying the difficulties of being human and I also wondered if it would focus on the morality tale as well as providing some well required social commentary. What I received was all of them, however they were delivered incredibly poorly you could almost overlook them.
I think the directing suited the film and was appropriate, however I felt the writing was lacking. It just appeared, to me, like DeMonaco was unsure of what genre of film he wished to depict - Horror/Thriller/Sci- Fi - so he happened upon the conclusion that he was going to unite all three and make something spectacular. It just felt sloppy and disorganized.
In addition to the poor writing, a major factor of it was defiantly the dialog. Also, the stupidity of certain characters was amazing, especially the daughter. It was just ridiculous. Everything it was attempting to portray was undermined by it's obviousness. There was no vacant space for you to fill with your own personal interpretations. In other words, there was no subtlety.
It actually began promising, surprisingly enough, but then went completely downhill after about 20-30 minutes. It appeared like it would really address the societal issues of our innate thirst for violence, but alas it didn't. It just decided to be a generic thriller with horror incorporated. And also include obvious "twists". And that's purely the writing.
The acting was decent, it was pretty generic and each actor was interchangeable. Ethan Hawke did a decent job, however it seemed a little too familiar to Sinister in terms of how he acts. I also found Tony Oller to be completely underutilized. If you're going to make a horror/thriller film, at least include a good villain, which they did to an extent, however he was incredibly underutilized. The character and the actor.
5/10. Began promising, progressively became a generic horror/thriller. Very poorly wrote in terms of it's approach to the concept and it's intelligence. Simplistsically, it could have been handled better in better hands. Wasted opportunity. However, is still somewhat enjoyable if you look at it from a horror/thriller perspective and are willing to overlook it's all it's insane obviousness.