Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Purge

This is topic The Purge in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 06-27-2013, 04:27 PM:

This is a dystopian movie where, for 12 hours each year, all crime including murder is legal. It's an interesting concept, and I enjoyed finding out how the director would handle it. Particularly since this is supposed to be a "micro-budget" movie that was made for $3 million. It shows where the movie industry has gone when Three Million Dollars is "micro", though.

From beginning to end, the story reminded me very much of The Omega Man (1971) and, since The Omega Man is one of my favourite movies, that likely has something to do with why I enjoyed this one so much.

The movie has some great images in it; the best being the women in the long white dresses and Halloween masks doing things like skipping down a hallway with two bloody machetes or riding piggyback on a crazy man while carrying a fire axe.

If I had made this movie the only thing I would have done differently would have been to let the audience meet more of the neighbours before the start of The Purge; this would have provided an opportunity to contrast their behaviour before with what happens later on. This did happen to a limited degree but that introduction was incomplete and all over within about two minutes. Outside of that, this movie is damn clever and well worth watching.