The Purge: Anarchy
Grade: B-
Starring: Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo, Zoe Soul, Kiele
Sanchez, Zach Gilford, John Beasley and Michael K. Williams
Premise: Three sets of strangers join up to try and survive
the annual Purge in 2023.
Rated R for strong bloody violence, intense, disturbing
thematic material, constant profanity, and scary moments
Made on a tiny budget with only a few recognizable stars,
the 2013 thriller The Purge had an
unexpectedly strong box-office haul, immediately granting the film a sequel (sound familiar?). I didn’t see the original film, but I
heard a lot about its Hunger Games-esque
premise, in which all laws and emergency services are suspended for a 12-hour
period, allowing people, in the not too distant future, to let out all their
pent-up aggression by any means necessary. The film’s claim was this tactic,
instituted by a group called The New Founding Fathers, helped lower crime and
unemployment—albeit often by having the people who might be in such conditions
brutally bumped off. I guess writer/director James DeMonaco wanted a good idea
for a free-for-all that would allow the Panic
Room-type scenario of the first film to play out without such petty
distractions/plot obstacles as police being summoned. Having done that, and
emboldened by the success of the film, he cranked out a sequel the very next
year: The Purge: Anarchy. From what I’ve
heard, Anarchy is the big bad
brother, darker, meaner, with a wider range of crimes experienced, and with its
main characters out in the open, fleeing for their lives in a dark, unfriendly
city—a different kind of terror from the claustrophobia of the first film.
Anarchy is
definitely dark and gritty and intense; it’ll keep you watching. But, as you’ll
read me say later, it slowly sinks in that, hey, even though the idea of a government-sanctioned
annual free-for-all is kind of intriguing for a movie, it’s not plausible in
the slightest. No, not at all. And even a movie with such a singular idea isn’t
immune to certain horror-movie-staples, which become more and more obvious as the movie goes on.
Plot
It’s 2023, the ninth year of the reign of the New Founding
Fathers of America, whose idea for their citizens to have the chance, once a
year, to purge themselves of all dark thoughts and impulses has done wonders
for society the other 364 days of the year. Sure, there are dissenters, like Internet
blogger Carmelo Jones (Michael K. Williams), but, for the most part, the ‘rules’
are pretty straightforward: if you wanna purge, go for it, and good luck
getting all the yucky out; if you’re not purging, stay inside, keep weapons
close, and hope to God no one comes for you.
The film follows three sets of characters on Purge night—an estranged
young couple (Kisele Sanchez and Zach Gilford) who bicker over every little
thing right up until their car breaks down in the middle of an empty Los Angeles
highway with less than an hour until the Purge kicks off; a kindly waitress
(Carmen Ejogo) and her grown daughter (Zoe Soul) who want to weather the storm,
if they can, in their downtown apartment; and a mysterious man (Frank Grillo),
who drives downtown armed to the teeth with a serious look on his face and a
mystery man’s pictures apparently giving him motivation. Wherever he’s going,
you clearly don’t want to be there when he gets there. But the night is dark and full
of terrors. The waitress and her daughter are yanked from their apartment by
the armor-wearing denizens of a baddie in an 18-wheeler who’s mowing down any
people he gets in his sights. The young couple seems to have been ‘tagged’ by a
gang of mute, mask-wearing thugs, who follow them everywhere. Even when the
mysterious man unexpectedly takes them under his wing, they’re still stuck
downtown, in the dark, with gangs swirling around. And the mysterious man is clearly hell-bent on getting to his destination, whether his new ‘friends’ survive or
not.
What Works?
The Purge: Anarchy is
undeniably intense; it hooks you from the early going, getting you wondering
just how horrific a night of such free-for-allness would truly be. Of course,
with a movie and a premise like this, you just know, every time the characters
get a breather, another threat is right behind. With a premise like this, a
movie could almost have no specific characters and just be a faux-documentary, and
it would be great—really, really dark, but great.
The characters we have, though not super-developed,
are reasonably engaging. Frank Grillo is solid in what must be his first
starring role (he should look familiar to audiences for his
often-scene-stealing roles in Warrior,
The Grey, End of Watch and Captain
America: The Winter Soldier); I’ve heard it said he was perfectly cast. The
script doesn’t really require a lot of him, and the character is a clichéd type,
but he’s solid. There’s not a whole lot for the other characters to do but
scream, gasp, cry, and be scared, but they hold your attention. The movie is really
all about the suspense, the attitude, the darkness of its premise, and the
haunting promise that, just before the end credits, there are “364 days until
the next annual purge”.
What Doesn’t Work?
Before I get started, let me remind you (and myself), I gave
this movie a B-, and it held my attention fairly easily. Most thrillers have a
good idea or two to get the ball rolling and set up the screams and suspense,
and Anarchy was no different (I mean,
it certainly got me a little paranoid, thinking about how I would hold out on
such a night of criminal debauchery). But…
But, the main premise—the idea of the annual purge—is complete
nonsense in my opinion. Complete nonsense.
And I’m writing this as a Christian, who believes that all people have a sin
nature and are, at their root, evil. Thus, the idea of ‘purging’ one’s darkest
impulses has a sort of ring of authenticity. But there is no way, no way, this would fly in real life,
even a ‘real life’ set almost a decade from now. In this day and age of
tolerance and acceptance and let’s-settle-our-differences-and-find-peace, this
kind of raw sadism would never happen. Not to mention, that’s a heck of a mess
one 12-hour period causes. Each half-day purge would have to be followed by a
several-day (or week) clean-up period to take care of all the bodies, blood,
fires, bullet shells and general wreckage—it would be way too inconvenient for
any city or country’s budget. The Purge isn’t
the first story to tackle the idea of popularly-accepted savagery (The Hunger Games, anyone?), but it fails
to address how a society centered around this event would hold together. For
instance, there’s a late scene—very reminiscent of The Hunger Games, not to mention Richard Connell’s famous short
story The Most Dangerous Game—in which
unwary (usually poor) people are snatched off the street by gangs and
delivered to the rich, who have auctions in which they buy people to maim and kill, or else buy their way into a sort of arena
where they can go after the hapless, unarmed people placed in it. The
film does make a great deal about how the rich need to purge as much as anyone,
but they do it in this high-society way, complete with the non-participants in the
little ‘Game’ watching excitedly from behind glass.
This scene, which is actually effective in that it’s so
sickening and cruel it kind of makes you want to vomit, represents the
real problem with something like The Purge, in my opinion. Forget the clean-up that would have
to happen afterward. Forget even the numerous lawsuits that would likely ensue the
next day, once Purge rules were up and people wanted recompense for their
losses. There is no way a society could function as a decent, happy, almost
crime-free society for 364.5 days and then give itself over to complete and
utter heartless, sadistic, animalistic crime against itself, and still function
again like everything was hunky-dory afterward. I don’t see it. I know the
first film presented the idea of neighbors who smile and laugh with each other
on the 364.5 turning against each other and going cuckoo, but I just don’t see
it. A society would not be able to happily turn a blind eye to the horrors it
commits on one night. It would not continue to function. There would be wars
and crime galore during the 364.5. If anything, the Purge would have to be a 12
hour period in which no one is allowed to
commit a crime, and society can catch its collective breath. That wouldn’t be
much of a ‘purge’, but I’m just saying.
But this is all the premise, right? As long as the movie
pulled it off, why worry? Well, Anarchy,
in addition to suffering from the
can-you-really-leave-your-disbelief-at-the-door-for-this skepticism from people like me, does succumb to many
regular horror movie tropes. Where to begin? People who think hiding in a
closet in their broken-into apartment will keep them safe from armed intruders?
An elderly father who gives a long, tearful speech about how much he hates the Purge
and says he’s going to sleep in his bedroom and don’t disturb him? (He’s going
to stay put, right? I mean, he’s not up to anything)
A character who gets killed right after telling someone they love them? A woman
who screams in a you-need-to-be-quiet moment while hiding when a small animal
(a rat, in this case) jumps on her? People who out of nowhere become expert
marksmen with heavy automatic weapons, firing on moving targets in the dark? The
friendly neighbors who take you in, promising safety and “no Purge here”?
People who leave their only weapon in a room they vacate, only to be cornered
when their apartment is broken into? People who are so comfortable that they’re
asleep in their beds on a night when anyone can break into their house and do
anything they want to them? Guy who’s life is spared saves the life of the
person who spared him? Any of this sound familiar?
Oh, and it did feel the tiniest bit insulting that statements like "God Bless America" or, for heaven's sake, the song "God Bless America" are used in such a dark, brooding movie--including a credit's sequences set to the song played in operatic form against a montage of images of guns and crimes and killings. No patriotism here...
Content
Anarchy is dark.
While some of the blood effects are a little cheesy (a couple times, people
getting shot through with many holes reeked of CGI), there’s no denying that a
lot of the happenings onscreen are dark. People are shot, stabbed, run over,
set on fire, hit by cars, blown up, etc… People hurting/killing/maiming other
people becomes a fixture of the background, a matter-of-fact detail that’s kind
of sickening. Yeah, it’s dark.
Bottom Line
The Purge: Anarchy is
a pretty good movie in that it will hold your attention and keep you watching,
but I didn’t love it. Its key premise is way
too far-fetched if you really think about it, even for a gritty, futuristic thriller. There’s
also a lot of horror movie staples like people trusting people they shouldn’t,
people going into rooms/buildings they shouldn’t, would-be “innocent”
characters turning out not to be innocent, etc… It’s an interesting idea, and
there’s sure to be a third one (because when do movie franchises ever stop at
two these days), but I thought it was just okay.
The Purge: Anarchy (2014)
Written and Directed by James DeMonaco
Rated R
Length: 103 minutes
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