Ten Stars or Less

The main question I have now, four movies deep, is if you were guaranteed to survive the night, would you participate in the Purge? The concept of the Purge is unique and no doubt could happen one day in my life time. Who ever came up with the idea was brilliant. Of course the people who suffer the most in Purge situations are the low-income people, but usually they target themselves or the rich, so the rich also suffer. No one can say these events are meant to achieve certain goals, when they usually go above and beyond the desired results. In The First Purge, we witness the original program launch in 2018. Over population is to the blame, not enough money to support everyone is their reason, but to witness mass murder is really the objective here. What is very cliché about these films now is a small group of people always end up as the focal and survive. Their methods of survival turn out to be the movie’s focal point, which is understandable, considering people love an underdog story. It is always fascinating how groups bond together to commit mass murder, yet random people walk the streets and survive. So many innocent people die, while others manage to make it through the blood bath without harming a soul or getting their brains shot out. In any story about survival, leaders emerge and the weak follow. What tricks us into falling for these heroes is the ruthless aggression shown by the New Founding Fathers of America. In order to make their program work, they employ killers to hunt the weak. People always use family as an excuse to seek revenge and The First Purge is no different. I’d have to watch the original Purge again to remember how that was, but I felt this particular movie didn’t quite live up to the second and third movies. Maybe because the story is so narrow-minded, or the vision was just a little off from what we have all come to know as the annual purge. Hopefully you won’t spend your night like I did in a theater of young adults who talked and clapped whenever people were butchered. Who knows if The Purge will ever become a real thing? 6/10