2014’s The Purge: Anarchy was a rare horror sequel that was better than it’s dull predecessor The Purge. Now The Purge: Election Year hopes to end the trilogy on a high, but is it a winning film?
It’s election year and the New Founding Fathers of America are worried that Presidential Candidate Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) will win the election and end the annual Purge. In a bid to eliminate her the NFFA abolishes the rule that protects high ranking government officals on Purge night. In order to survive the night Roan’s head of security Leo (Frank Grillo) will have to use all his skills to protect her from the NFFA and the general public.
It’s a crazy time in real life politics at the moment, so no wonder James DeMonaco wants to capatlise on the maddness and make digs at political figure and politics in his movie. However the film continuously hits you on the head with it’s political agenda that it becomes distracting. The previous Purge movies have underlying themes about class and race and I like the fact that a horror movie attempts to bring them to the forefornt of it’s themes. But the film is so concerned with it’s depictions of politians that at times it forgets it’s also a horror movie and needs to scare it’s audience too.
Bringing back Grillo character from Anarchy was a smart move as he is someone for the audience to relate and follow on this wild night. Especially as Mitchell’s Roan is too annoying and preachy to care about. It’s also good to see how the working class people (usually the main victims of the purge) struggle and surivive duing Purge night. I was also glad to see the return of Edwin Hodge’s Dante Bishop, as the only character to appear in all three movies it’s a nice bit of familiarity to link the previous films together and see how far he’s come.
So better than the original that started it all but not as intense or scary as The Purge: Anarchy. If you enjoyed the previous movie then it’s probably worth seeing.
Rating 3/5 -a good start and an underlying creepiness keeps the film afloat, but it’s probably time to end the purge now once and for all.