THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR – Review

A ludicrous premise revisited – once a year, for a 12-hour spell, all crime is legal and cops and hospitals can’t help you! The first THE PURGE was a tight if unremarkable home invasion thriller while PURGE: ANARCHY opened things up, taking the bloody action to the streets. Both scored big box office (and home viewing), so now the third chapter arrives in the form of THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR, another ridiculous, but worthwhile exercise in violence and ham-fisted political commentary.

Like the first sequel, THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR focuses on a handful of innocents who, for various reasons, find themselves out on the streets during the Purge. Frank Grillo returns from part two as Leo Barnes, now promoted to the Secret Service, assigned to protect Charlie Roam (Elizabeth Mitchell), a female senator whose family is murdered during the purge in an 18-years-earlier prologue. She’s running for President on a bold platform centered on ending the annual 12 hours of chaos which makes her a target for her opponents; the “New Founding Fathers of America,” (NFFA), populist pro-Purge haters led by a lunatic minister (Kyle Secor). Senator Roam is determined to sit out the Purge at home rather than some fortified bunker because she doesn’t want to look weak (What could go wrong?) Across town, Joe Dixon (Mykelti Williamson) is forced to spend the night guarding his convenience store, along with his Hispanic employee Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria), after his ‘Purge Insurance’ agent (I want that job!) informs him, just hours before nightfall, that his coverage has become unaffordable. Then there’s reformed anarchist Dawn (Liza Colon-Zayas), trolling the streets in her armored ‘triage’ van, tending to victims.

THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR opens with some clever satire involving the election, but soon settles into a standard series of bloody shoot-outs with these characters running from, or fighting with, bad guys who are either employed by the NFFA to assassinate Senator Roam or have no motive beyond “It’s Purge night! Let’s go kill some folk!” Those pro-Purge commercials that we saw in the trailer for THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR made the film look more of a ROBOCOP-style parody than it is – but they’re not even in the film. Writer-director James DeMonaco returns for the hat trick, which at least provides consistency in tone. He at first keeps the viewer distracted from the underlying silliness by taking class-warfare potshots at the ruling elite, but the concept of a ‘Purge’ is still full of holes (Purge insurance?!?) There is no shortage of gore or colorful villains in THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR. A pair of young black females introduced shoplifting in Joe’s store show up later in cars covered in Christmas lights, ready for revenge (“I want my candy bar!”), but they’re dispatched before they can cause much damage and that Uncle Sam you see in all of the ads is onscreen for about a minute before having his brains blown out. There are some disturbing and haunting visuals to be found in THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR: a massive guillotine set up in the street, a group of white-gowned hanging victims, but much of the action is so dark and confusingly choreographed, I couldn’t tell the bad guys from good (though I assume the ones with Swastika, Confederate flag, and ‘white power’ patches were the villains). At some point it dawned on me that we’re rooting for Senator Roam, yet if she prevails, there won’t be any more Purge sequels, but I’m sure the producers will find a way. If you enjoyed the earlier Purge films, see THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR, but like they say in the movie, if you’re not into Purging, you should probably just stay home.

3 of 5 Stars