Every great creative idea is eventually run into the ground by capitalism. This is why movies get sequels until the quality gets so bad, people eventually stop showing at theater screenings and pirate the movie off internet so they can leave scathing reviews. Point is: I think sequels are useless in general, but some franchises lend themselves well to the idea. The Purge, for example, is a capable movie that received copious amounts of shit from critics and public alike for not living up to the potential of its own concept. The Purge: Anarchy was released a mere eleven months later and it's both a very obvious movie and fun throwback to a simpler time in filmmaking.
The Purge: Anarchy has three lead protagonists, each trapped outside during the purge: a middle-class couple with car trouble (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez), a single mother and her teenager daughter who aren't safe anywhere anyway (Carmen Ejogo and Zoë Soul) and the most self-conscious badass cop you've even seen, who's motives are unclear (Frank motherfuckin' Grillo). The first four are just trying to get through the night alive, so they wisely stick as close as they can to the gun-toting maniac with apparently strong moral compass. It sounds like a pretty simple-minded premise, but it works because it's blissfully straightforward and nowhere near as serious and loaded as the first movie.
Writer and director behind the purge franchise James DeMonaco eased on the social commentary in The Purge: Anarchy. It's a rather straighforward dystopian thriller about people trying to survive a state sanctioned slaughter for twelve hours. There's a lot of bullets flying, a lot of running from a death trap to another and it wouldn't be all that interesting if DeMonaco didn't shrewdly kept Frank Grillo's character motivations secret. It's what kept me watching for most of the movie, to be honest. Gilford, Sanchez, Ejogo and Soul are lambs and Grillo's the unwilling shepherd with something on his mind.. I don't think there's any religious metaphor to The Purge: Anarchy, I'm just saying. It doesn't reinvent thrillers. It's a much safer film than its predecessor.
Hello there.
If you discount the fact that The Purge: Anarchy's lead cast is crowded with victims who happen to be very good at cheating death, it features a fun and deceptively intricate setting where anything goes, but especially murder. When people are given choice of crime to commit, apparently they all end up killing one other. It's a colorful movie in a disconnected way that will remind you of past glories like Running Man and Judgment Night. Gamers will also recognize the influence of their entertainment medium of choice. The Purge: Anarchy uses kill zones and bosses mechanics in order to structure its action scenes. The latter is perhaps the best thing the movie has to offer. Vivid, well-choreographed and painstakingly brutal gunfights. It is not realistic for two cents and that's why it's kind of a blast.
The Purge and The Purge: Anarchy are negative images of one another. The former is a very cerebral psychological thriller that gleefully attacks American stereotypes and the latter is a well-coordinated and colorful dystopian hellscape where multiple political factions are using genocide to further their agenda. The purge is a great concept that still has plenty of stories to tell and perhaps the most fascinating one that's been left untold is the building tension between two yearly purges. How do you live with your neighbor that took someone you love during the twelve hours where it was legal to do so? The Purge: Anarchy was blunt, but it was a rare occurrence of a pertinent sequel and fans of the franchise will be happy to learn there's another one coming to theaters this year. This universe has defiitely a lot more stories to tell.
