The Purge
James DeManaco
James DeManaco
85 min.
Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Max Burkholder, Adelaide Kane, Edwin Hodge, Rhys Wakefield, Tony Oller, Arija Bareikis, Tom Yi, Chris Mulkey, Tisha French, Dana Bunch
R for strong disturbing violence and some language
It’s been awhile since the horror genre has made such a forceful comment on the modern socio-political climate. The Purge is more than just an exploration of one family’s survival, it’s a daring indictment of modern class warfare.
Set in the near future, the United States government has ceded control of its safety to a group of individuals called the New Founders who’ve established an annual 12-hour period where all crime, including murder, is legal. This particular year, the nouveau riche Sandin family are beginning the annual Purge in the relative security of their wealthy subdivision employing a new security system that dad James (Ethan Hawke) has sold to all of his neighbors and stands to make a sizable bonus for being tops in sales for the month.
When young Charlie (Max Burkholder) has sympathy for a fearful stranger (Edwin Hodge) and lets him into their fortified house, the entire family including mother Mary (Lena Heady) and sister (Adelaide Kane) at risk from a troupe of rich youths pursuing the vagrant scum to end his life. They aren’t the only participants that night, but they might just be the most dangerous.
In this futuristic society, the wealthy can afford to protect their homes with advanced security, but the poor must survive on their own wits. The bloody stranger is the representative of those endangered folk, pursued by the rich with a disregard for human life and a desire to cull the undesirable elements from society. In some corners of this new world, the belief is that the Purge may have reduced crime, but has done so at the cost of untold lives, weeded out by an increasingly large group of disaffected people.
James references his family’s impoverished beginnings, making them seem even more out of place in a neighborhood of the longtime wealthy. To an extent, the Sandins represent a dangerous incursion into the safety and security of established greed, flounting their wealth for their neighbors to see and setting up a notable lack of support in the siege laid against their family home.
The youths additionally represent an affluential segment of society that devalues that which is beneath them and doesn’t discourage their rampant sadistic urges. They see themselves as part of the solution, not a part of the problem. In their polite, but insane assault on the Sandins, we see what a culture of young rich kids with no concept of morality become when allowed free reign. Today’s culture has seen a number of such people boldly kill innocent people and earn little more than diminished sentences from dispassionate judges. These cases have become more prevalent since this film came out, making it an interesting snapshot of the current class wars at play in the United States.
While director James DeManaco’s script is expertly crafted, his direction is fairly generic, comprised of traditional horror motifs, dark scares and mostly obvious explorations. I’ll praise him for not going the found footage route and limiting the hand-held shaky cam action, but without the script, his direction would be unenergetic. The film delivers a handful of unexpected shocks, but doesn’t break new ground for the art form.
Perhaps the quasi-futuristic setting enables the narrative to focus on the social ramifications of legalized crime and allow the audience to explore the potential turmoil surrounding any decision that gives those with the power and financial resources to protect themselves an upper hand. The Purge is that rare horror film with a social conscience, delivering needed thrills for those who love the genre and ideas to contemplate for those with less interest in the eviscerations.
One of the interesting elements of the film’s conclusion is that even the rich, with all their power, money and protection, can still succumb to those who have the knowledge and wherewithal to stop them. The horde of youth are able to break through the purportedly safe shell in which the Sandin’s have secured themselves. With that one statement, the film makes the case for the power having recompense against the rich, however futile a full-frontal assault of such magnitude might be.
In the end, the only member of the family to perish is the one who sold security to others. This suggests that while there is certainly money to be made in offering security to those who can afford it, such endeavors come with a price, namely that even their own protection cannot save them. In total chaos, it isn’t the wealthy who will prevail, but the resourcesful. The film gives us hope that the poor, with support from the compassionate, can beat back the advancing killers and usurpers and create the unified front that can not only portend a brighter future for all socio-economic strata, but that it isn’t vice, vitriol and villainy that will win out in the end.
June 10, 2014
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