Movie Review: THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR

The previous two entries of The Purge franchise have been pretty good little action-thrillers mixed with sci-fi/horror concepts at a political angle. When 2015 didn’t have a Purge film, I figured they were taking the year off to maybe flesh out their political commentary and time it with the release of 2016, an election year. When I saw the title, The Purge: Election Year, my prediction seems to be on point.

Frank Grillo returns from the previous entry, The Purge: Anarchy, as a hired head of security to protect Senator Charlie Roan, played by Elizabeth Mitchell, during her presidential campaign. Roan is also the sole survivor of an incident that happened 15 years ago (more on this later) where her family was brutally slaughtered by a purger who held them hostage and made Roan decide who would live out of the ordeal all while listening to George Clinton & The Funkadelics. Senator Roan’s campaign is to put an end to the annual event known as “The Purge” and expose the public to how the upper elite class benefits from the vent financially and socially. Obviously, this puts a pretty big target on her back and for years, she has been protected by that clause in the laws of “The Purge” where government officials (“with a ranking of 10”, whatever that meant) cannot be harmed and are excluded from the event. This year, 2025, the NFFA (The New Founding Fathers of America) have made a change to not exclude any government officials from “The Purge” meaning everyone is fair game. Couple that with Senator Roan wanting to stay home as opposed to a safe, secure location in order to identify and put herself on the same level of the potential voters and, well, you know where this is going.

With writer and director, James DeMonaco, returning and keeping his duties consistent, there is no doubt that The Purge: Election Year is takes steps in the right direction with its world development. The first film used the fictional event as a simple backdrop against a effective home invasion film and often got compared to John Carpenter’s siege film, Assault on Precinct 13 (which is a re-telling of Rio Bravo). Its sequel, The Purge: Anarchy, stayed outside a little longer to introduce audiences to how the environment was prior to “The Purge”. While that film was a 50/50 balance of developing the social and moral anarchistic viewpoint of this event along with a rescue story that feels like it owes a lot to John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, The Purge: Election Year starts to stand on its own.

It definitely feels that DeMonaco is confident in his story that with this third entry, he is given the room to explore his world-building. And while he touches upon some of the social and political events such as the #BlackLivesMatter movement, he doesn’t really develop these half-baked ideas nor does he fold them into his world. Unfortunately, it is frustrating and comes across as lazy. What is interesting is the shift towards focusing on different social classes going from rich, white people to minorities and, personally, I think this is an important shift in the franchise and one that really speaks to a majority of mainstream genre audiences. Even though there are some cheesy lines that come from the character of Joe, played by Mykelti Williamson, that seem cheap and feel like the stereotypical “dialogue spoke by an African-American written by a white man”, these cringeworthy lines are limited to just a handful.

The other quibble that some may have, I know I did, is the timeline of this new world. The Purge: Election Year begins with the scene where Roan’s family is held hostage by a masked psychopath who is playing “We Want the Funk” by George Clinton & the P-Funk All Stars. Prior to the next scene, a title card appears that says “15 Years Later”. Since The Purge: Election Year takes place in 2025, that puts the event with Roan’s family was in 2010. Something didn’t seem right when I saw it and while I couldn’t pin down the exact year when “The Purge” was introduced in the reborn America, everything I could find showed that it was in the late 2010’s. Since 2013’s The Purge was supposed to be a futuristic dystopia set in the year of 2022, I think it’s safe to say that this was pushed into law post 2013 which means this flashback disobeys the logic already put into place from a film that is only 3 years old. That’s a big oversight but maybe I’m thinking about this too much.

The Purge: Election Year is a pulpy piece of modern exploitation cinema that I still appreciate more than something as bland as The Shallows (read my review here). There are a lot of tense moments in this new entry and it is thrilling and unique enough that even though it introduces many ideas that you will want further explored. However, I think for this anarchic story to thrive, it is time to introduce new writers or a new format (think of a 12 episode season where each episode takes place in a real-time hour).