[rating=8.00]
It’s hard to discuss The Purge Election Year without taking into consideration the two films that preceded it. As inconceivable as the idea might have been back in 2013, when the first Ethan Hawke led entry of the franchise overcame critical scorn to earn a respectable $89 million worldwide—even more impressive, considering its $3 million budget—The Purge series has morphed from gratuitous torture porn into a scathing, juvenalian satire about American life, culture, and politics in the first quarter of the 21st century.
Those grand concepts were there from the start, sure, but in the initial outing it seemed a tacked on addition meant to add an illusion of depth to a silly story about a family struggling against a band of murderous, would-be intruders. As we’ve learned though, that film served as a mere microcosm of that world, and since then writer/director/creator James DeMonaco has moved increasingly to the macro. In 2014’s The Purge Anarchy, we’re offered more insights into the fascistic regime that has overtaken America, the New Founding Fathers of America, or NFFA, who created “The Purge” as a means of decimating the lower class undesirables who “burden” the government and economy of the country.
As the title of that film suggests, the carnage is widened from one household to an entire city, and we see the horrifying nature of the world implied by its predecessor with our own eyes, all while deepening the story of the NFFA and introducing the element of a burgeoning resistance movement among the populace. Which brings us now to The Purge Election Year.
In the sort of on-the-nose titling that we can apparently expect from this franchise, the focus of this film moves more towards the politics of this dystopian nightmare version of America as populist senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) runs a presidential campaign on a platform of ending Purge Night against NFFA presidential figurehead Minister Edwidge Owens. Realizing this candidate is within a hair’s breadth of successfully toppling the NFFA regime democratically, party leaders concoct of scheme to take care of their problem by removing the restrictions against government employees for this year’s purge and hiring a team of actual Nazi mercenaries to assist in the assassination of the senator. Now, it’s up to her head of security, The Purge Anarchy’s reluctant hero Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo), to protect the senator at all costs and ensure a successful election as president.
While the film’s surface level focus maintains its commitment to showcasing blood and gore—there are axes, guillotines, immolation, and even a band of bratty millennial girls who terrorize neighborhoods in sexualized Halloween costumes while blasting Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.”—the social commentary that the franchise has always strived for is ramped up in measures equal to the violence, adding a sense of genuine depth to delve into beneath the bloody exterior. No longer is this series a functional satire hidden amidst a sea of blood and guts; rather, the point is now more overt than ever.
In terms of actual terror, it’s few and far between and often the result of little more than jump scares and insane rambling from masked psychopaths wielding their weapons of choice. While certainly included as an appeasement to their fan base, the real horror of The Purge Election Year, indeed, of the series itself, is in the world in which the movie(s) exist. There’s certainly a visceral connection between audience and protagonists as we root for their (hopefully) eventual success, but that aspect in this outing feels about as moot as the tidbits of social commentary provided by the first film in the franchise.
DeMonaco has positioned himself as heir-apparent to the legacy of John Carpenter, with elements of both his Escape From series and Halloween borrowed from freely here (as they’ve always been in this series). Like Carpenter, DeMonaco uses over-the-top violence and performances to speak towards larger social issues; unlike Carpenter, the point is never lost.
Never is this more apparent than it is with the subplots involving Joe Dixon (Mykelti Williamson) as the fed-up store owner who just wants “this night” to end for good and Dante Bishop (Edwin Hodge), the de facto leader of an underground resistance movement who wants to use Purge Night to further his revolutionary aims. Through them, we’re able to get a larger view of the people for whom this tradition affects most, the societally marginalized. While the series has, until this point, maintained a large focus on issues of class and economics, here we’re given commentary on race relations within this world.
Like all satire, the commentary given provides a dark mirror to our own world, forcing us to consider where we’re at and where we stand within our own society. It’s not only easy to draw comparisons with between The Purge Election Year and our America, it’s hard not to. Joe superficially supports the candidacy of Senator Roan while maintaining there’s no way she can affect actual change; Bishop calls for no less than outright revolution, echoing the talking points of many a disaffected Berner in our own election cycle. “You better win,” he says to Roan, reluctantly hopping onto her bandwagon in the same way that the far-left are now reluctantly accepting our own Hillary Clinton.
Even issues of immigration are touched upon as “Purge tourism”—a fad in which the moneyed youth of other countries come to enjoy the privileges of America themselves—is introduced. But the satire doesn’t stop there. Images of anonymous suits call to mind the kind of back-room dealing of the elite that has become so popular to talk about in politics today; as an actual minister, Owens is an over-the-top caricature of politicians who’ve blurred the wall between church and state, preaching a twisted view of the gospels to further his own dark agenda.
To be sure, the satire provided by both The Purge Election Year specifically and The Purge series generally is never anything more than superficial and surface level. That, in itself, almost seems to be a critique. After all, what is life, culture, and politics in America today if not superficial and surface level? But, perhaps more importantly, what good is satire if it isn’t readily understood by the masses? In producing something so base, the larger points of the movie and its series have a greater chance of resonating with larger swaths of the culture itself. It may be “Intellectualism for Dummies,” but maybe the unwashed masses need an artistic critique that panders to their desires.
While there’s clearly a lot going on here, in the end your enjoyment for and appreciation of The Purge Election Year will largely hinge on your thoughts of the series so far. In terms of horror, it never adds anything we haven’t seen before in either the first two Purge movies or, really, any of the other films that masquerade as horror in today’s climate. But I’d posit that Purge series was never anything but superficially horror to begin with. With Election Year, the larger points of the series are pushed fully into the light, making it arguably the best Purge yet.
The Purge: Election Year is now playing in theaters everywhere.
