The Purge : Anarchy

I went to Terror Tuesday this week just so I could get pumped up and in the right state of mind for The Purge Anarchy. The movie I saw was called Phantom of the Mall : Eric's Revenge. It was this cheesy take on the Phantom of the Opera and starred awesome legends like Morgan Fairchild, Scott Estes, and Pauly Shore; obviously an instant classic. The reason I bring this up is because the first Purge movie that came out took itself way too seriously. They had these preppy fraternity and sorority girls attacking Ethan Hawke's home, and this was supposed to be frightening because you would never expect this kind of behavior from kids that looked like them. But that's just the problem, I would never expect this from 125 lbs males who wear sweater vests; so if scrubs like this came up to my house, I would giggle, throw an eight ball out of my window, and watch them them fight over it like a pack of wild dogs. And then at that moment I would take my time picking them off one by one.

The Purge movies have a great concept, just poor execution. Even though it is set in a civilized society, they really should just take the post apocalyptic approach to it on Purge night. This movie should be like Doomsday or The Warriors where you have these random and outlandish gangs attacking one another while throwing in killer fight sequences and over the top death scenes. Can't you just see The Orphans getting violently beaten to death by The Baseball Fury? Or maybe have people dressed up as different Chappelle Show characters; pimp slapping and burning each other up in the streets. Prince's fruity basketball crew versus Clayton Bigsby's klan would be cinematic genius. Ok, maybe only to me but at least it would be a start!

Well I'm happy to say that they may be slowly coming around with The Purge Anarchy. During this year's Purge, we are introduced to Sergeant (Frank Grillo), a man who has been waiting for this night for quite a while, so that he can exact some sort of revenge on a man he has been following for reasons we will learn about later. Also you meet Eva and her daughter Cali, who are both struggling just to pay the rent and to take care of their father at the same time. And then finally there is the young couple who is struggling with their recent decision to get separated. Due to the unusual circumstances that only happen on Purge night, their paths all cross and Sergeant reluctantly decides to help them survive as long as they don't ultimately interfere with his mission. Also during this, there is a resistance that has been started up by Carmelo (Michael K.Williams) in order to fight back against the government because he believes that the Purge was created for population control; just another way to get rid of the poor bleeders of society. They actually spend a lot of time talking about this and it's a constant theme throughout the entire movie but the writers and producers should realize that we don't want messages in our horror films; we just want blood and boobs.

So the setup is kind of long but even when the Purge eventually starts up, there's just more of the same stuff that you saw in the first one. It isn't until Sergeant leads the group underground into the subway tracks that you actually start to see what you paid for. They run into this trap where there's a crazy gang of hoodlums that's riding around on four wheelers and wielding flame throwers that winds up chasing them, and this of course leads to a shootout between them and Sergeants crew involving automatic weapons and homeless people acting as a make shift obstacle course. There's also a scene where people who were captured on the street are auctioned off to the highest bidder and end up in a hunting ground where the richy rich can use night vision to track them down and kill them. Some pretty cool stuff. And I haven't even talked about the gang of Juggalos that rides around in a van that looks similar to the clown car from the video game Twisted Metal; or the old dude who's called Big Daddy that rides around in an 18 wheeler shooting people with a 50 caliber gun.

I'm just grateful for the fact that this is the first movie Noel Guglieme has appeared in where he doesn't say the annoying word "Holmes" twenty times in a row in a 5 minute period. I give this movie a rating of barely FRESH simply because its seems to be heading in the right direction and for the fact that I was thoroughly entertained for at least 70% of the movie.