The Purge: Election Year

You probably already know where you stand on the Purge films at this point. These movies essentially constitute little more than an excuse for jump scares and torture-porn set-pieces, with an excessive dose of shaky-cam tossed in for good measure. This time around, returning writer-director James DeMonaco, along with returning producers and masters of schlock Jason Blum and Michael Bay, have decided to cash in on our country’s current state of political and social unrest because all three men presumably have access to cable news outlets and just assumed that’s what the kids are into these days. While previous entries in the series have borne something of a political bent, you can tell this one is double-extra-super political because it’s set in Washington, D.C., and features a female senator hell-bent on winning the presidency so she can end the Purge. See? Politics! (Purgatics?)

Now, you might think that the filmmakers would use a lighter touch with such sensitive subject matter or take advantage of the opportunity to make some subtle statement about the flaws in our country’s faltering systems of governance and law enforcement, but you’d be wrong. Although every conceivable hot-button social topic is thrown into the mix (Income inequality? Check. Mexican Immigration? Check. Corrupt insurance industry? Check. Strained race relations? Triple check.), it’s still business as usual in the land of the Purge and the home of the deranged. Maybe I’m cynical, but I don’t see a movie in which the c-word is used at least three times before the title card runs and an African-American character utters the line “Whole buncha negroes comin’ this way, and we sittin’ up here like a bucket of chicken” winning any awards from the National Organization for Women or the NAACP. But hey, it’s not all politics. There’s also a B plot about scary teenage girls trying to steal candy bars.

DeMonaco’s direction has shown little appreciable advancement over his previous work, with spatial geography still largely incomprehensible in his action sequences. His camera often seems to lag behind character movements, leading one to question whether he blocked his scenes improperly or just didn’t have the money for a second take. When you factor in all the time-killing torture vignettes the film indulges in, the script must only run about 30 pages — and, as bad as DeMonaco’s camera work can be, it’s his script that deserves the real derision here. This is, after all, a film in which a central character, engaged in what passes for political discourse in this fictional universe, compliments the aforementioned senator’s rhetorical prowess by saying, “She got them little t—–s, but she got some big-a– b—s.”

The cast seems to be giving this production precisely as much attention and effort as it deserves — which is to say, not much at all. Frank Grillo returns to reprise his role from the last film, only this time he’s a Secret Service agent because, again, politics or something. Elizabeth Mitchell seems to want to play her senator as a strong female lead, but the script relegates her to the tired women-in-refrigerators trope almost immediately, and she spends most of the third act absent or gagged. Edwin Hodge plays a relatively straightforward anti-hero, but he’s a black male, so obviously he has to sacrifice himself to protect his white counterpart Grillo. Mykelti Williamson at least seems to be enjoying his one-liners, but he’s also a sympathetic black lead, so you know he’s not making it out alive. It’s hard to blame the actors alone for participating in the sins of a script this stupid; bad decisions like that require a manager’s touch. I can only hope that everyone’s checks were cashed quickly.

So, there’s a third Purge movie. If De Palma or Swiss Army Man are somehow sold out, and you absolutely have to see something in a theater this week, it’s an option that you can consider. It does, in fact, exist. It’s worse than the first two, but better than Meet the Blacks. Was it worth seeing? I couldn’t really say. To quote yet another memorable line from the film, “I wasn’t paying attention, I was thinking about waffles and p—y.” Rated R for violence and strong language.