Illegal immigrants Adela (Ana de la Reguera) and Juan (Tenoch Huerta) have come to America to build new lives for themselves. They have prepared for the Purge.
What no one has prepared for is that Purgers are no longer satisfied with one night of mayhem. They never want it to end.
While the government struggles to battle the Purgers, our heroes will have to fight their way over the border.
Horror has always been a great vehicle for social commentary. The Purge franchise stands out for how unsubtle it has been.
One of the selling points for me has been watching the convergence of the franchise’s messaging with the real-time collapse of the American project. And as real world events escalate, the films have leaned harder into the potential of its premise.
Somehow, despite their generic narratives and flashy aesthetic, there was a strange blunt power to these movies. They were obvious and unsubtle, verging on didactic - but there was something underneath it all - I think what I like about the Purge franchise is that it tears away all the pageantry and shines a light on the roots of American society and its institutions. There is no innuendo to The Purge - it is about what it is about.
There was always a sense that franchise creator James DeMonaco was using each installment to refine why the Purge could exist, who would benefit from it, and who would suffer. The scariest aspect of the Purge is that every movie operated on the idea that America was set up for something like the Purge to happen.
Around the time of Purge: Anarchy, I thought the franchise was setting itself up for endless sequels. By focusing on the titular event rather than characters, The Purge could be a series of ‘What Ifs’: what if the Purge took place on a plane? A Highrise building? In the middle of the sea? Outer space?
As the movies grew more ambitious and direct in drawing parallels with developments in American society (particularly during the 2016 election and presidency of Donald Trump), that path felt unnecessary. These movies were more unique than that - almost like reflections of contemporary reality. They were becoming… important?
The Forever Purge is the first of the installments where it felt like the series could benefit from focusing on those kinds of contrived premises - this movie lacks a strong dramatic structure. We get a ticking clock eventually, but the movie takes forever to get going.
This is also the first movie where the political messaging is so blatant and poorly integrated it is genuinely annoying. Obvious commentary is a mainstay of the series, but the previous entries always found a way to (at least) staple it to something dramatically interesting. Or they kept it brief.
Here, the dialogue is so leaden that it feels like a student film about the evils of US history. The characters never feel real, or like archetypes - de la Reguera and Huerta do their best, but they do not have a lot to work with. Josh Lucas is the racist white guy who learns the error of his ways after he and his pregnant wife are saved by the Mexican men who work on his ranch. It is so basic and obvious it comes across as insulting to the audience.
What makes it worse is that the movie also lacks interesting setpieces and the sheer weirdness of previous entries - there is nothing here to match the shock of the family shoot-out in Anarchy or the Candy Bar gang in Election Year. The movie ends up being boring.
Aside from a poor script, it also lacks a sense of directorial control - the previous movies were not masterpieces, but the filmmakers had a working understanding of camera movement and using space within frame to draw the viewer’s attention. The most obvious example is a one-take scene in which our heroes sneak through El Paso. The scene is more concerned with an extended take with using that time and camera movement to build tension and reveal threats.
Throughout the movie, the filmmaking works against the suspense - the camerawork lacks any sense of dramatic intent, making it difficult to work up a sweat.
There is a genuinely terrifying idea at the heart of this movie, one that continues the series’ tradition of reflecting (or predicting?) where American society is going.
At the end of Election Year, an anti-Purge presidential candidate wins election and ends the Purge. But that movie ends on a montage of news reports of people re-starting the Purge on their own. It is the unsettling moment in the movie, and feels more so now, post-January 6. Election Year’s apocalyptic ending points out that even if they lose the election, Purge supporters are still out there.
The Forever Purge is even more pessimistic - after eight years, the Purge’s creators, the fascistic New Founding Fathers, were returned to power and brought the Purge back. However the Purge’s followers are impatient with the idea of a single controlled event, and take matters into their own hands. The movie ends with the New Found Fathers brought down by their own creation. It could almost be a metaphor for the Republican Party in 2021.
Stripped from the movie’s context, this idea is great. But a great idea is not a story. And that is the frustrating thing about The Forever Purge.
A great premise. Timely political themes. These are great ingredients if you know how to cook them right. The Forever Purge fails to create a story and characters that serves its themes.
I always liked The Purge’s willingness to be blunt and obvious in showing off America’s bloody underbelly - it is a rare quality in mainstream Hollywood, and I did find myself taken in by the films’ righteous fury.
But in The Forever Purge, the rage is missing. And so is the filmmaking.
Apparently, there is a sixth installment on the way. Hopefully, the filmmakers take the right lessons from this one.
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