MOVIE REVIEW - The Purge:Anarchy

A year or two ago the original, The Purge kind of came out of nowhere and had some good success.  This is the second installment of this series.   But this is more like a movement, than an installment.

The Purge was a movie set in near the future in the United States, where a new regime has come into power called the New Founding Fathers of America.  They have instituted a new policy called , the purge.  For one 12 hour period a year, all crime in the U.S. is legal, including murder. The whole idea is that people will weed out the poor, and let the rich or non-poor to flourish.  Crime is down, and so is the unemployment rate.  The original takes place on purge night, and showcases a family trying to survive the night of terror. And has an interesting story line.

The original was a nice mix of violence, parody, satire, and a look at a new original idea that was based in unabashed fiction. It made some social commentary of the anger that possibly can rage within, and made you question possibly, would you participate in the purge?  It was clearly fiction, and clearly a small movie, that found a big audience.  This installment, is none of those things. Now it's just violent, ugly, and divisive.

This movie chooses to showcase only violence, and forgets any real semblance of a story. Oh, they try, but it's stupid, and predictable.  This is making far more social statements and some of them are quite disturbing.   Here, the Feds are now killing people, because we are not killing enough.  Also, this is immensely stereotypical in who is bad, and who is good.  This really takes on the rich, and clearly spends more time being cruel than creative.

It's offensive to virtually everyone if you watch anywhere near carefully, and is intelligence insulting to almost anyone.  Gone is the creativity, and the irony of the original. Clearly test groups wanted less story and dialogue and more killing and violence, and you get it. Much of this feels like a video game and is mind melting.  Except, most video games are far, far more compelling.

The Purge:Anarchy.   Terrible, and a far cry from the surprising and creative original.