A taut and gripping thriller

Rating: 8/10 (29 November 2013)

In the near future, all crime is perfectly legal for twelve hours on a single day of the year. The affluent Sandin family find themselves in great danger on purge night when they allow a bloodied stranger (well played by Edwin Hodge) who's the target of a murderous mob to seek shelter in their home. Writer/director James DeMonaco relates the fresh and compelling premise at a brisk pace, builds a tremendous amount of claustrophobic tension, ably crafts a dark grim tone which becomes more increasingly bleak and upsetting as the harsh story unfolds towards a shattering conclusion, and pulls out all the pulse-pounding stops for the harrowing last third. Moreover, this picture gains additional potency from its sharp and confrontational exploration of how American society favors the rich and thus puts the poor at a cruel disadvantage to be easily victimized by the upper class (in an especially bold and inspired touch, the stranger is ultimately revealed as a homeless war veteran), how pent-up rage and aggression gives people a frightening capacity for extreme violence and brutality, the alarming lengths a person is willing to go to save one's own life and protect your loved ones, and how "cathartic" violence causes more problems than it solves. The excellent acting by the tip-top cast keeps the movie humming: Ethan Hawke as straight-arrow nice guy patriarch James Sandin, Lena Headey as James' concerned wife Mary, Max Burkholder as naive son Charlie, Adelaide Kane as sulky and rebellious teenage daughter Zoey, Arija Bareikis as sweet neighbor Mrs. Grace Ferrin, and Chris Mulkey as the jolly Mr. Halverson. Rhys Wakefield contributes a splendidly creepy and smarmy turn as a calm smooth-talking psycho preppie gang leader. Jacques Jouffret's slick widescreen cinematography makes expert use of shadowy lighting. Nathan Whitehead's spare shivery score does the nerve-rattling trick. A real tense and startling nail-biter.