Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.
The Purge is a right-wing fantasy movie. I don’t mean that the political right is specifically thrilled about the idea of 12 hours of lawlessness (although I think a lot of them are). No, what I mean is that pretty much every conservative I know has a closet full of guns and an intense desire to use them on a home invader. The Purge is that fantasy writ large. It’s a world where people are essentially dared to break into your house and you can kill them without consequence. The entire membership of the NRA had to have a hard-on over this concept.
There’s another, more sinister reason that The Purge is the deepest fantasy of the American right, and it is that 12 hours of lawlessness. Essentially, this is the story of a future, far more fascist America, where for 12 hours every year, virtually all crimes are made legal. While it’s not stated outright, after a massive economic crash, a new political party takes over the country. Unemployment is down and draconian policies crack down on crime. However, needing a release, the American people are given a 12-hour period every year to go buckwild and get all of their violence out of their system. And, true to form, this is not a parade of rape and theft, but of the wealthy and fortunate targeting the homeless. It’s open season on “undesirables,” and there’s a reason that the stereotype of conservatives wanting to hunt the homeless and immigrants for sport exists.
Anyway, there aren’t a lot of surprises in The Purge. Security system salesman James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) has been extremely successful in setting up the well-to-do with security systems to protect them during the yearly purge. They are, at least in theory, in support of the yearly purges; after all, his career is essentially built off of them. As this year’s purge gets set to take place, he and his family—wife Mary (Lena Headey), daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane), and son Charlie (Max Burkholder)—prepare to settle in while the world goes to hell around them for the night.
Everything changes soon after the beginning of the purge. A man (Edwin Hodge) appears outside of their house yelling for help, and Charlie turns off the security system and lets him in. At the same time, Zoey’s boyfriend Henry (Tony Oller), has re-entered the house just before the purge started, ostensibly to talk to James about his relationship with Zoey. In reality, though, he’s decided to kill him so that he can be with Zoey. A firefight ensues, Henry is killed, and the man vanishes inside the house. Shortly afterwards, a group of privileged, masked youths show up, demanding that the Sandins send the man out to be purged. The entire middle of the movie consists of threats from the people outside, who claim to be able to get in, and the family searching for the man now hiding in their house.
Now, it’s not going to be much of a movie of the desperate purgers don’t get inside the house, so we know that’s going to happen. The one thing that happens that is genuinely interesting in The Purge is the final 10 minutes, which is actually kind of fascinating almost in spite of itself.
The home invasion genre is one that is always upsetting. Home is the one place you’re supposed to feel safe, and the genius of the subgenre is that it takes that away from us. The Purge gives us that, but gives it to us in such a strange set of circumstances that all of the elements of home invasion that are normally so frightening are a full layer of abstraction more distant. We’re in such a bizarre and ridiculous place that all of this becomes academic—I don’t care about these characters because I can’t see this situation as a real one.
There’s a potential story here, but it’s not the story that we’re given. This is a morality play, and it is because Charlie opens the house up to the man caught outside. The problem is that there’s no reason for this. The entire film turns on the momentary decision of Charlie, and while he is perhaps the most morally normal in the family, the moral conundrum than he is dealing with is never explored beyond the most obvious ways it can be taken.
I suppose, ultimately, that’s my problem with The Purge. It could ask some really interesting questions and it never does. It only asks the most obvious ones, and answers those in the most obvious way. Instead of really opening up the floor for a real discussion of violence, we get something that Glenn Beck and Alex Jones simultaneously warn their viewers about and jerk off to.
It's a shame, too, because I like both Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey. Both of them have done really good work both before and after The Purge, and it’s depressing to see them attached to something that is this tawdry.
Why to watch The Purge: Home invasion movies are always scary.
Why not to watch: Other home invasion movies are better.