Harefooted Halloween: The Purge

What I Liked: Nada.  Well ok, that one fight in the game room with the billiard table, the pinball machine and the ax is kinda fun.

What I Didn’t Like: Everything else.

Overall Impressions: Look, I’ve always thought the idea for The Purge was pretty stupid so when I finally sat down to see it I was a little surprised that it was even worse than I expected.  Nothing in the film makes a lick of sense or is all that compelling or suspenseful.

If this were a simple home invasion horror/thriller picture that took place in the regular world would it make a difference?  I argue yes, it would actually improve the thing.  I get that a huge part of the draw (or maybe the whole draw) is the crime-is-legal-one-night-a-year gimmick but in my opinion it detracts from the investment I’m supposed to have.  We know there’s no possibility of anyone coming to help the one family who’s fine with the idea of the purge but doesn’t participate themselves.  We also know there are no consequences for the intruders so again, why should I care?

I mean jeez, I could run down a long list of all the reasons why the framework for the film is total nonsense (which it wants us to take completely seriously by the way) like a good chunk of the country burns to the ground every year making a full recovery never achievable so commerce is basically fucked.  Yet everything seems to be hunky dory when it ain’t purging time.  But probably the biggest fuck up the filmmakers made when they put this crap together is they tell us that all crime is legal for twelve hours when I think they really meant bodily harm is legal.  So to be clear, every single crime on the books is fair game.  Sure, there are some bullshit exceptions like that the highest level government officials are off limits and only “class 4 weapons and lower can be used”, whatever that means, we never find out, but I doubt anyone with a murder boner is gonna give a flying fuck.  Anyway, shit like robbing banks, jewelry stores, cyber crimes, poisoning a water supply, creating your own army to wipe out entire cities (using class 4 weapons only of course), insurrection (without killing top officials of course) and so on is all totally fine!  The picture ignores this extremely ugly stuff even though the parameters allow for it.  What they really had in mind is what they show, physical one on one altercations, mostly murder.  It’s frickin’ weird how this slipped through.  I dunno, maybe they thought crafting very specific rules was going to be too hard for the audience to follow, plus “all crime is legal” has a cleaner nicer ring to it.  Whatever.

Boy, I hate to be this down on what should’ve been a fine thriller that just happened to be teed up on an idiotic, but ultimately ignorable, platform.  Unfortunately the setup and execution are so dumb I can’t get beyond it.  The most unique element of the film is also its worst aspect.  On top of that half the movie’s in the goddamn dark because the lights go out and we can’t see shit and can’t tell what the hell’s going on and every decision every character makes is infuriating and plot points are tediously predicable and the commentary and messaging is ham fisted as hell and, *sigh*, this thing sucks man.