Kind of a sick / demented movie

Rating: 4/10 (22 April 2014)

Lot of people mention it's an "original idea" and such, but I didn't find it very original at all. It's pretty much a spin off of Battle Royale & Hunger games.
I did like the suspense aspect and the flow of the movie was good. action sequences were decent and Ethan Hawk (who I've always liked) did a decent job here, but that's about the end of my likes.
What I didn't like was the very concept of the plot and just thought for a movie that is trying to take itself serious the plot itself just didn't add up or wasn't realistic IMHO. I just couldn't buy the fact that there's now this Utopian America and we owe it all to this "Purge" day when people can unleash all that bottled up anger and go all rage crazy. I'm sorry if a day like this existed and people really did go around killing, raping, and committing other various crimes are they really all going to be able to just turn it off the next day and go back to their fairy tail lives? No way in hell. If you kill someone just because you can, it's not like it cleanses you and makes you a better person the other 364 days out of the year. That's utterly ridiculous...
As others have mentioned the other things that bugged me about the movie was how idiotic their kids were. Their son is a hypochondriac freak who builds a spy machine out of a tank and mutilated baby? Sorry but a kid like that needs to be in some serious therapy or a straight jacket. Not to mention a total idiot who endangers his entire family by disarming the alarm letting some stranger in the house, what an unrealistic character... The daughter is also a moron who won't group huddle with her family in a crisis situation, another unrealistic aspect... The masked gang acted like total retards to the point where it was just stupid, as did the neighbors. I don't know if they were just trying to copy A Clockwork Orange or what. It's like they were all on drugs or in some weird robot mode. I don't know if it was meant to be creepy or what but in the end it just came off as weird, unbelievable and stupid. And finally I hate to say it but Ethan Hawks character was right in that they should have just handed over the guy to the masked gang as there really was no other option other than to fight, in which odds were they would have all been killed. And as others have pointed out the dialog throughout was just weird and not natural or realistic.
Overall just too many unrealistic and stupid things for a movie that's trying to come across as a serious movie.