A funny thing happened last summer: I watched a so-so movie and thought, I sure hope they make a sequel. That movie was The Purge, a wholly mediocre home-invasion thriller, unremarkable from dozens that have come before it except for one element: The bizarre, what-would-you-do premise of a near-future society that lets citizens “release the beast” for one night each year.
In The Purge‘s imagined America, unemployment and poverty rates are down and our culture has found relative peace and prosperity … except for (or because of) one annual 12-hour period in which law and order is suspended, hospitals and emergency services go dark, and people can do as they want to each other with impunity. Last summer’s film kicked off that scenario, only to waste it by spending all our time watching the well-heeled Sandin family fight off intruders who would circumvent their fancy security system. Boring! I wanted to see how such a night would affect the have-nots who can’t afford armored barricades. Show us the huddled masses already!
Sure enough, meet The Purge: Anarchy (rated R), a follow-up that gives the people (OK, me) what they want. It’s 2023, a year to the day after the last film, and America is gearing up again for its annual waking nightmare. Instead of the Sandins and their neighbors we focus on three stories: A young married couple (Kiele Sanchez and Zach Gilford) who have nowhere to hide when their car breaks down in downtown Los Angeles; a working-class mother and her teen daughter (Carmen Ejogo, Zoe Soul) who approach the night with perfectly reasonable unease; and a determined loner (Frank Grillo) who’s looking forward to Purge Night. He’s armed to the teeth, driving an armored muscle car, and out to settle a personal score on the one night he’s guaranteed to get away with it.
These diverse plotlines converge fairly early on, and as they’re running for their lives we draw a slightly richer glimpse of the impact of the Purge on society. You know that neighbor in your apartment building who keeps hitting on you? On Purge Night, he doesn’t have to take “no” for an answer. The financial district is a wasteland, as all the money has been moved to an undisclosed location. And then there’s the not-so-subtle implication that the Purge isn’t wiping out poverty – just poor people – and mysterious black trucks on the streets introduce the possibility of our government playing an active role in that policy.
Written and directed by James DeMonaco, the Purge movies are thematically inspired by earlier, better films: The first one reminded me quite a bit of the family-under-siege ideas expressed in Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972); and there’s a real John Carpenter vibe to this sequel, especially the violent urban chaos of Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and 1981’s Escape From New York. (DeMonaco wrote the screenplay for the 2005 remake of Precinct 13.) Freed of the household interiors of the first Purge, now he takes to the skies – looking down on the dimly lit streets, Google Maps-style, to observe the progress of our five heroes as they scurry through the maze of back alleys and burning auto wrecks.
It’s all sufficiently moody and effective on its own terms, but by the end of The Purge: Anarchy I’d seen enough of these annual nights of mayhem. Still, if Hollywood is listening I wouldn’t mind just one more sequel: Next year, give us a film that explores this society on the weeks before or after a Purge. The idea that individuals would take advantage of a free pass to do bad things is not surprising, but I’d be intrigued to see what that does to America the rest of the year. Do we treat our neighbors and co-workers better, or worse? Do we compartmentalize that night and pretend it never happened, or do we make notes all year about those who have done us wrong? This premise gives us an opportunity to look at our dark sides in cinema’s funhouse mirror. Don’t waste that opportunity on more scenes of violence for its own sake.
(IMAGE: A scene from The Purge: Anarchy. Photo courtesy of Universal Studios.)