Review: The Purge: Election Year

It’s Purge Night and an election year, as Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Michell) runs a campaign that is particularly emphasising a desire to put an end to Purge Night. Her opposition, Rev. Eldridge Owens (a terrible Kyle Secor) is an ultra-Conservative backed by The New Founding Fathers and their venal, sinister leader Caleb Warrens (Raymond J. Barry). Roan makes the bold/stubborn/idiotic decision to spend Purge Night at her home as opposed to bunkering down in complete safety. She does have security detail, including familiar face Lee Barnes (Frank Grillo) who is something of an expert at surviving Purge Night. Unfortunately, it’s not long before the rest of the security team is wiped out by someone clearly looking to silence Roan permanently. Eventually they find themselves alongside a convenience store owner (Mykelti Williamson) whilst fending off political assassination attempts and creepy Purge participants (chiefly a pair of bratty but violent youngsters, one played by Brittany Mirabile). Ethan Phillips is typecast as Roan’s Chief of Staff.

 

“The Purge” was a really interesting and clever concept that resulted in a pretty solid home invasion thriller. It was followed by “The Purge: Anarchy”, a Carpenter-esque urban action-thriller variant on the original concept, and I liked it almost equally as much. I was intrigued to see where writer-director James DeMonaco (the man behind the two previous “Purge” films) would take the basic “Purge” concept next. Unfortunately, this 2016 film is a pretty stale state of affairs. In fact, it’s a bad version of the second film but with national politics replacing socioeconomics/class/racial politics. Even then, it doesn’t do anything terribly interesting or fresh with the politics.

 

It starts well, as is often the case with films that disappoint. T-Rex’s ‘20^th Century Boy’ is a nice way to start, and not long after that we’re treated to the gloriously funkadelic ‘Give Up the Funk’ by George Clinton’s Parliament. I was happy. I was ready to have a good time. I did not have a good time. For one thing, despite the rather decent amount of name actors here, the majority of the performances are overblown or uneven. Even one of the best performances of the bunch, given by Elizabeth Mitchell is uneven. For the majority of the film she’s fine, but her opening scene shows the actress delivering her lines in completely hollow, disinterested fashion. I doubt it was an acting choice. She gets better after that, but the role doesn’t really allow her to display her most effective asset as an actress: Warmth. Raymond J. Barry only appears very briefly, and while amusingly unsubtle, it’s hardly a good performance. The worst offenders are the actors playing the various punks and creeps, especially an actress named Brittany Mirabile who is absolutely eye-rolling levels of terrible. The punks and thugs in the first two films were effective and creepy, these twits are laughable wannabes who are hip-hop video ‘tough’. They just swear and cackle, and that’s supposed to be terrifying apparently. By the time we get to the home stretch – where the film completely loses its shit – all of the villains are dreadfully over-the-top.

 

On the plus side, Frank Grillo rarely turns in a bad performance, even if he was much better in the first film. I also didn’t buy his character’s change in profession here, either. I know he’s capable of protecting people, but how exactly did he end up working in the Secret Service protection business after we last saw him? The best performance by far comes from Mykelti Williamson, who is always a pleasure to see even in a pretty crummy role like the one he has here. The actor’s aren’t to blame here, though. It’s DeMonaco, and his ham-fisted direction and caricatured, wholly obvious script. He’s not even half as clever as he likely thinks, and not even an actor as dependable as Williamson can stop a line like ‘Hope can lead to a lot of letdown’ from being an absolute groaner. The characters are mostly uninteresting mouthpieces for a too-clever screenwriter, who by the way, takes shots at both left and right, but stupid shots likely to interest or offend either side of the spectrum. DeMonaco just hasn’t got the chops for it. The weak, heavy-handed political commentary takes you out rather than drawing you in, thus the tension evaporates before it begins. There’s very few new ideas here and the only one that is remotely interesting – murder tourism – is given short shrift in favour of following Mitchell’s obvious Elizabeth Warren/Hillary Clinton clone being stalked by persons from within on purge night. The series continues to offer up creepy images and weird ideas for purge participants and their modes of transport. This time though, I didn’t care because everything felt…scripted. Of course it’s scripted, but you’re not supposed to think of the filmmaker when a character speaks, you’re supposed to believe in the character and what they’re saying is meant to sound organic.

 

Lame political satire, uneven performances, and an overly familiar feel as Mr. DeMonaco fails to take this franchise in any new or compelling direction. DeMonaco should’ve quit while he was ahead, as there wasn’t enough juice in the concept left to warrant a third outing. Unfortunately this wouldn’t even be the last in the franchise, as a prequel and TV series followed.  

 

Rating: C-