THE FIRST PURGE: America Is Fueling Its Provocateurs

The Purge series has taken a strange ride on the back of American culture. With a premise considered fantastical when it appeared in 2013, the hypothesized government-sponsored murder holiday has shown a family succumb to violence, a group of strangers band together for survival, and a government official trying desperately to end the 12-hour bloodbath. In each of the three previous entries, though, the gleeful violence was tempered by a sense that humanity’s better nature would win out and the concept would remain a B-movie allegory.

Then, unlike The Purge: Election Year, America didn’t vote for the progressive female to be president. The country opted instead for the fear-mongering bully, proving that it’s closer to the beginning of The Purge series than the end. So what better time to backtrack, with the fourth installment taking audiences to the origin of the suddenly less insane holiday to show how it could all start up.

Granted, America is not about to legalize crime for 12-hours a year, but its shiny veneer has been ripped off, laying bare its socioeconomic strife and increasing polarization. That is what The First Purge feeds on, puking out a mess of cultural critiques and over-the-top violence that’s hard to shake. It’s not very smart, it’s not even very good, but boy is it entertaining.

Finally Changing Perspectives

Series writer James DeMonaco has always kept his eye on the cultural implications of the purge, particularly when it comes to race and class. Over the series, it became clear that the purge wasn’t really wanton murder but an excising of the proletariat, which resulted in low crime and unemployment rates. The increasing focus on these sorts of politics made it strange that the series resolutely focused on white, middle to upper class protagonists, effectively preventing itself from really diving headfirst into its implications.

The First Purge does away with this oversight, setting its story in a poor area of Staten Island and showing the government offering cash to get their targets to participate in the ‘experiment’. That means everywhere you look, minorities are being exploited and slaughtered, including a gang leader (Y’lan Noel), a local rights activist (Lex Scott Davis), and her wayward brother (Joivan Wade), but that also sets them up as their own heroes.

It’s a refreshing change that allows the film to get right at the heart of its dystopian premise, but it also reveals just how muddled its ideas are. The government is the raging monster, that much is clear, but what about the drug dealers who pollute their streets the rest of the year? This question is quite literally asked within the film, and its answer is less than satisfactory.

For Your Ridicule: America

If anything, the laser focus of The First Purge reveals that it works better as a broad survey of injustices than as a damning, point-by-point breakdown of what America gets wrong. This is less Animal Farm and more the teenager reading Animal Farm for school; you know, the one that picks up on the corruption of power but misses the Stalinism.

Luckily, that comes with the same kid’s brash idea of entertainment. Even for a film that relishes its bloody violence, it unmistakably turns everything up to eleven, blaring its gore, its quips, and its clichés. The silliness and the beats with which it presents its operatic moments invite you to react, preferably out loud and in a crowded theater. Yes, I’m endorsing unruly behavior in cinemas, but only because the Purge series asks you to do it.

I mean, when an otherwise intelligent character fails to pick up a gun as she navigates the murderous island, you either have to tamp down your rage or yell at the screen. And insanely dumb things happen over and over again in First Purge, particularly in its overlong setup, but the mounting frustration primes you for a release. By the time all hell breaks loose in the gloriously gauzy, over-the-top style of the series (something director Gerard McMurray pulls off adequately but without the eye of previous series director DeMonaco) you’ll be ready to hoot and cheer as iconically clad baddies are dispatched. Hopefully, the entire theater will be rocking with you.

Horror As Therapy

The release one experiences when watching the Purge series is not unlike purging itself, and the dichotomy of its pleasures and its critiques have never made for an easy balance. Arguments that this is trashy or even irresponsible entertainment are valid, but it’s important not to leave out the storied place horror has as potent social commentary.

Horror allows us to exaggerate our fears, embellishing them until they are unreal enough to be digested. In its own clumsy way, this is precisely what The First Purge and its predecessors do. Their blend of loose cultural critiques and Hobbesian flair has (I think inadvertently) led it closer and closer to reality, a coincidence it has fully embraced.

Take, for instance, its brief inclusion of a sex crime. This is territory the series usually avoids, keeping its violence almost exclusively relegated to murder. However, in The First Purge, one of our intrepid heroines is briefly groped, and after fighting off the attacker, she yells a line aimed directly at a certain American president with a history of bragging about groping women. The moment plays as both funny and horrifying; we all know what we’re laughing about, but in reality we can’t run away from the man like she can.

The First Purge: Outrageous Entertainment

A mess of ideas and images get thrown onscreen in The First Purge, and the uneven final product will leave you questioning whether it was all worth it. And yet, the film’s play with topical issues will sear moments in your mind. You’re aware of the way police treat black men in America, right? Well, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an image more damning than the one The First Purge offers up: a group of police officers surrounding a black man, poised to beat him to death, in the middle of a baseball field. It’s so American, all that’s missing is the apple pie.

Do you think The First Purge is biting social commentary, an offensive mess, or somewhere in between? Let us know in the comments!

The First Purge is in theaters now in the US and the UK. For international release dates, click here.