Society Reviews

Sub·tle – Difficult to understand or perceive

Sub·tle·ty – The quality or state of being subtle.

There is nothing subtle about The Purge Franchise. The only reason this film exists is that Donald Trump won the election and the only reason this film series exists is that writer James DeMonaco hates America. Let’s take a quick history lesson in The Purge franchise for a moment. The Purge (2013) was about a pack of rich, white, likely conservatives wanting to break into a home to kill a random black guy, for reasons.

The Purge: Anarchy revealed the real reason for the Purge was so that the government could reduce the population by killing black people poor people. The Purge: Election Year was about Hillary Clinton saving America during an election year from Donald Trump and his neo-Nazi hitmen with the assistance of a Che Guevara inspired communist resistance unit. This brings us to The First Purge, a film that made no secret that this was about Trump and his supporters with the teaser trailer. To put the cherry on the sundae, what would be the best possible release date for your not so subtle Anti-American Occupy Wall Street wet dream…that’s right, the birthday of America…The 4th of July, so subtle.

If we are being honest, The Purge Anarchy is the only film of the franchise that is halfway decent. The reason was, you had Frank Grillo on the heels of Captain America: Winter Soldier doing his best impression of The Punisher making the film entertaining. But now we have a prequel to explain the origins of one of the dumbest premises in movie history. There is no way around this, the story is stupid and it has been since the first movie. How are people murdering each other supposed to benefit of the country?

Even if I was the ‘evil Capitalist’ that James DeMonaco envisions, I don’t believe it would be in my interest to risk billions of dollars in property damages along with the possibility that my workforce which keeps my business running could all be killed overnight. You really need to turn your brain off and put it in the freezer to believe a set up like this, unless you really believe this is going to happen because Trump is president like DeMonaco does.

The First Purge begins with the Republicans New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) winning office because America really wanted a third political party (sorry libertarians). In a world where the media, Congress, and the courts would totally be ok with this; The NFFA who is fully funded and endorsed by the NRA (subtle) decides to begin a ‘social experiment’ in Staten Island, New York in which crime will be legal for 12 hours including murder. To make sure that people actually kill each other, the government is paying black people poor people to kill participate in the purge. However, as the Purge begins and the government realizes that black people poor people aren’t killing each other at the rate that they would have liked, they opt for plan B which is sending Trump Supporters the KKK and the alt-right Neo-Nazis into the blackest poorest areas in town and murder all the black and brown marginalized people. It is then up to our heroes, a Bernie Sanders voter professional protestor, and her straight up crack dealer drug kingpin ex-boyfriend to save their neighborhood from Steven Crowder literal Nazis.

I don’t know what year this is supposed to be because the timelines of this franchise are so screwed up, your guess is as good as mines. The first film, the NFFA wins power in 2014, the second film takes place 9 years after that, however the third film takes place in 17 years after the second one which makes no sense considering that Frank Grillo would have been an old man at that point but fuck it, if James DeMonaco isn’t going to put any effort into the storyline, neither am I. It wasn’t even 5 seconds into the film where the cringe begins as a crack smoking cartoon of a character is terribly overacting to convince the audience just how crazy he is.

5 minutes later, you’re watching Marisa Tomei stand in front of an obvious blue screen that’s so shockingly bad, I’m convinced the scene was added in post-production as they didn’t have the budget to reshoot the scene on location. After 45 minutes of Grandstanding and Hotdogging, the film wasn’t half bad. Yes, it is chucked with enough CNN propaganda that even Van Jones makes a cameo but once it started moving the story along, it was decent enough. There is even a funny random moment where our main character literally gets getting grabbed by the pussy for no reason. However, when the 3rd act happens, the film loses its damn mind.

This film is for blue checkmark Twitter accounts who believe that Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan are real Nazis. The sole reason this film was made is to give progressives a film to point to and say “This is what Trump is going to do to America”. There is a saying in professional wrestling called “Getting your shit in”. It means when a wrestler is getting in all of his offensive moves to make himself look good. The First Purge is the equivalent of the writer getting in all of his shots at America, so he can to make himself look good.

Every checkmark on the far-left fear mongering checklist is in the film. The NRA puts a Nazi regime into power with its large piles of cash, Russian goons working for Trump to kill poor black people in low-income neighborhoods, Police Officers beating black people to death, the anti-military messaging, the anti-Christian messaging, the anti-capitalism messaging, etc. At one point, it is discovered that the government sent the KKK to Staten Island to kill black people so that the government doesn’t have to pay for them anymore. There is even a villain who looks like Ronald Reagan in a Nazi uniform. Maybe you could buy all this as one big exaggeration or parody at the expense of the political right but knowing DeMonaco’s politics and knowing people like Scott Mendelson will say this is “a frighteningly plausible near-documentary“, there is no parody here. The film comes to a screeching halt when a group of white supremacists storms a black church and gun down everyone inside…

Yep, this film really went there and reenacted the Charleston church shooting to score political points in a film the quality of The Purge 4…

They don’t even try to explain the origins of an idiotic film’s premise that is in its 4th installment nobody asked for, this film is to lecture Americans that this is what you did to this country by electing Donald Trump as president. At one point a character is literally crying while saying “what have we done to this country?”.

You can hear DeMonaco screaming at you with every line in the film, how could you have done this? From the marketing to the script to the filmmaking, this movie cares more about being a Trumptopian nightmare than having anything to do with the three films that preceded it. What’s probably the biggest problem here is that DeMonaco didn’t even have the balls to call out Trump by name while not being subtle or even remotely clever about whom he was talking about.

The First Purge is the mental breakdown of a Marxist Hollywood screenwriter pandering to the “Literally Hitler” crowd because Hillary Clinton lost the election two years ago. If you were looking answers to long-asked questions or even an expansion of the plot, you’ll probably never get it after this film earns the lowest opening gross at the box office in the entire franchise’s history. I wonder why?

 

 

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