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Critics Consensus: Half social allegory, half home-invasion thriller, The Purge attempts to make an intelligent point, but ultimately devolves into numbing violence and tired clichés.
Critic Consensus: Half social allegory, half home-invasion thriller, The Purge attempts to make an intelligent point, but ultimately devolves into numbing violence and tired clichés.
All Critics (147) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (57) | Rotten (90) | DVD (2)
Writer-director James DeMonaco's The Purge fritters away its promise in lurid, frenzied violence.
DeMonaco clearly hopes to make a significant moral statement on the level of Shirley Jackson's literary masterpiece The Lottery. Alas, his aim at political conservatives who support the gun lobby falls flat before he can pull the trigger.
If The Purge is as far-sighted as Network proved to be, we are in for very ugly times.
That old horror-movie standard, a homestead besieged by psychos, gets remixed with a bit of Occupy-era class-conflict satire in the disappointing future-set thriller The Purge.
Gimmicky chiller lacks the robustness and distinction needed to support its social-commentary ambitions.
The blunt instrument plot allows for a few sneaky moments of satire and social commentary lite.
While The Purge can be compared to plenty of other movies about families under siege, DeMonaco is good at winding up suspense and keeping the action going.
The Purge draws audiences in with one big idea, but doesn't deliver a narrative that effectively takes advantage of the theory.
Were it not for one inconvenient fact, The Purge could easily have passed into movie history as a rather decent slasher-thriller. Unfortunately, The Hunger Games got there first and got there better.
... though the film struggles to flesh out this rather Dystopian concept (something nearly every futuristic film has these days), it succeeds in its gripping suspense and romantic eye for violence.
An entertaining and deeply unsettling premonition of the state the US's obsession with guns may leave it in.
The interesting thing about The Purge series is how readily and easily the central premise develops into something with a little more bite.
Couldn't agree more with the critic consensus.
Super Reviewer
What comes up as a thought-provoking allegory that doesn't shy away from the sociopolitical implications of its premise soon gets lost in a last half hour that falls flat with a ridiculous excess of dei ex machina and reduces the Purge to what seems like a laughable sect.
You will go into The Purge intrigued by its premise and you will leave very disappointed. In a futuristic America, the new government (called the Founding Fathers) has managed to eliminate murder and unemployment by making all crime legal for one night each year. The logic is that this night of "purging" allows us to let loose our animalistic nature as well as letting the poor, less contributing members of society kill each other off. The film does not expand on these concepts, leaving much to be desired. It'll be too easy for critics to expose all of its flaws as a plausible system. Instead, the plot devolves into a standard home invasion movie that is predictable and populated with really, really stupid characters. The Purge is an example of taking a cool set up and turning it into cliche, forgettable crap.
Cliches around every corner, "The Purge" tries very hard to be original, but in the end, it's clever twist on the genre that the trailers make it out to be, kind of falls flat, with hardly any suspense or genuine terror throughout the film. Ethan Hawk is a great actor, so the film is held together well performance-wise, but the script is so simple and uninspired that the plot of the film is completely shit on in the final act. There is hardly any development as to why this "Purge" happens every year and by the end, anything that has been set up in the first two acts is completely ruined. Once the third act kicks off, moments that are supposed to be intense have no suspense, and sad moments happen in an instant and then move on to something else, leaving you no time to cope. Once the killers get possession of the home, the entire film pretty much goes downhill. This movie has LAME written all over it. The idea is interesting but that is all I will remember this for, just a missed opportunity, and the final 10 minutes will have you laughing, unintentionally. "The Purge" is a bad film that had the potential of being great in the right hands.
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