The Purge: Election Year (2016)

The idea of the purge is far more interesting than the two movies I've seen in the series. I really was disappointed by the first film as I felt it took this interesting larger idea and brought it down to a small home invasion boogeyman horror film. 'Election Year' is a better film than the first Purge movie because it actually explores the dystopian world. It's no surprise that the scenes with the drolly titled new founding fathers are the best and scariest of the film. There's always been a correlation between our societal fears and our horror films and these scenes show a mirror of the ugly kind of climate we live in right now.The thing that sort of disappointed me is that for the most part we don't get much of these villains. The movie for the most part is still a boogeyman chase film. It's a larger spectacle than the first film and with characters who are more likable and well developed but inevitably it gets kind of boring seeing these nameless drones go after our heroes. If the film didn't have leads like Elizabeth Mitchell and Mykelti Williamson I might have tuned out. They treat the material with the utmost sincerity. The successful moments of the film belong to them. It's needed because James DeMonaco isn't that great of a screenwriter. The scenes without the far out philosophical purge commentary play like a bad 'Friday the 13th' clone. DeMonaco is really the factor holding back this film from being really good. He's a mediocre screenwriter who has just enough little sprinkles of intriguing ideas to keep you invested in the midsts of bad dialogue and plot setup. As a director he is a waste. Obviously the purge takes place at night but that doesn't necessitate the film actually being so dark you have trouble seeing what is going on. The action and chase sequences are a cluster of chaos too. You can't tell what the heck is happening.The cleverest commentary sort of falls to the wayside by the end. The film sets up the Purge villains as hypocrites who want to use the chaos to commit genocide on the poor to keep the rich rich. They use religious symbolism to justify it. Brilliant stuff. But to get into spoilers if I may when we finally confront the minister(played by Kyle Secor who gives one of the more effective horror performances in recent memory), it turns out he is actually a fanatic who believes in the purge on that face value religious philosophy. Wouldn't it be more effective if he were the hypocrite the heroes accused him of being?It's a mediocre movie with some truly excellent moments. DeMonaco should let more talented film makers play in his 'Purge' universe.

This is where the franchise fails for me. I understand that the director wanted a hopeful ending and show how getting rid of the Purge would play out... but the execution was nothing special. While Purge Anarchy added a lot of really cool aspects to the franchise, this movie doesn't do anything new at all. The cast is pretty forgettable and you don't care much about these characters. Even Frank Grillo's character, which was a badass in Anarchy, is pretty underused in this one. Towards the last third of the movie, I found myself getting annoyed at how linear and uninventive the film was compared to the others. In summary, while Frank Grillo is still doing his thing and there are some decently fun sequences, this is a completely forgettable movie and a step downwards in a franchise that wasn't even good to begin with.

The Purge: Election Year (2016) is the third installment in the "Purge" franchise - following The Purge: Anarchy and The Purge. In this film we're reintroduced to Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo) who we've seen in The Purge: Anarchy, and Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) who is running for President with one divisive goal in mind: end the Purge once and for all. If you're familiar with The Purge series, you probably know what to expect from this. It has a fairly predictable story with minimal character development and doesn't try to be anything more than mindless action set in nighttime Washington D.C. The themes and tone of the story take a bit of a different turn compared to what we're used to in The Purge series, and attempts to buy a little bit more into the political sphere of the setting with a topical representation of American politics, some of the enemies being a team of white supremacists tasked with taking out opposition by right wing lunatics. This comes off a little heavy handed at some points and otherwise campy, and the villains weren't given any sort of depth besides just making them Nazis. The characters are all very stock and the actors to match. Frank Grillo playing your typical white knight badass while Elizabeth Mitchell plays a genuine politician who's good heart and morals drive them to do nothing but good in the world. The characters only get worse as you look into the other supporting characters, as they're just as boring if not more, with screen time that isn't helping us learn or develop their motivations or backstory. This might be something you're into if you're a big fan of the previous two, but you're going to have to shut your brain off for 2 hours if you want to get any enjoyment out of this film.

Like most Hollywood movies, The Purge: Hillary's Election Year makes no attempt to hide it's political leanings: Good "minorities", good White women, and a few token good White men vs the racist, horrible, racist, evil, racist, mean, racist White men.Towards the beginning of the movie, the idea of "murder tourists" (foreigners who travel to the U.S. to partake in the Purge) intrigued me. When introduced, the movie makes a point of showcasing murder tourists from South Africa. I didn't really think about it at the time, but later in the film, we find out why they were so specifically identified as South African (SPOILER ALERT!-its because they're bad, evil racism-fuled racists! Although when the South Africans are introduced early in the movie, they seem to have at least one Black man in their party)Other than the "murder tourists", the film follows standard issue Hollywood formula: Hillary is poised to defeat Donald and end the Purge, which her saintly minority followers all totally grok. Meanwhile, Donald's evil skinhead KKK Nazi followers don't want the Purge to end, so they haphazardly try to kill Hillary. They fail and Hillary is now in a position to overthrow evil Donald's regime. Or is she?!?!?