Movie Night! ‘More Purge…’ Edition

I wasn’t up to much this weekend, book-wise, so used being on-call as a bit of an excuse to catch up and try and make a dent in the pile of DVDs that I seem to have built up (no idea how that happened etc etc…) I still haven’t quite managed to fully make the leap to Prime and so on… I like having a shelf full of my favourite movies although yes, I really need to do something about the all the ones that I’m clearly not going to watch. But anyway… 😉

I found the ‘Purge’ movies, that I’ve seen, to be a bit of a mixed bag but Youtube did that thing where it threw a whole load of interesting clips my way and before I knew it, I’d somehow convinced myself that it was entirely my own idea to ‘book-end’ my viewing (chronologically, anyway) with the first and last movies in the series. And here’s what I thought…

‘The First Purge’ (2018)

To push the crime rate below one percent for the rest of the year, the New Founding Fathers of America test a sociological theory that vents aggression for one night in one isolated community. But when the violence of oppressors meets the rage of the marginalised, the contagion will explode from the trial-city borders and spread across the nation.

I quite liked this movie as an ‘origin story’ and how an already evil ‘social experiment’ is twisted further to suit the aims of the rich. I mean, three earlier movies kind of give the game away but this time round, that lends an air of inevitability to the movie. What is the point of taking a stand? Money will talk like it always does.

Well, the point is to survive and that’s what we’re left with here and it was at that point that the movie stopped doing its thing for me. The same group of people trying to escape the worst excesses of the other same group of people (although most of them, it turns out, were paid to be there so actually, yeah… it wasn’t as ‘samey’ as I thought); that’s what we have here and unfortunately for this movie, ‘Purge: Anarchy’ did it better. Until I watched the next movie…

 

‘The Forever Purge’ (2021)

One night is not enough as members of an underground movement, no longer satisfied with the annual night of anarchy and murder, decide to take over America through an unending campaign of mayhem and massacre, no-one is safe.

On the morning after the Purge, a masked gang of killers attacks a wealthy Texas ranching family and their workers. Exposed by daylight, the two families are forced to band together and fight back as the country spirals into chaos and the United States begins to disintegrate around them… 

I really liked this one 😊 This movie asks a question that maybe never occurred to the others, why stop Purging? Seriously, what is stopping you from doing what you want? There are more of you than there are of them. Go for it, purge forever…

Of course there’s something to say here about a populace being stirred up far beyond anyone’s ability to control but it was the weekend, and I wasn’t in the mood to think too much, so I just watched it as an entertaining ‘survival thriller’ which it did really well. The demonstrations of excess are all the same (again) but the group going through are a lot more engaging this time round with enough spark of their own to keep being interesting. I’d definitely watch it again.

And now it’s onto the TV show… I’ll let you know how that works out 😉