One of the dumbest Goddamn movies ever made, The Purge miserably fails in it’s half-assed attempt to be a compelling commentary on American society.

When I first heard of the premise of The Purge – That in a mere 10 years from now crime is effectively wiped out because the government legalizes all crime, including murder, for a 12 hour period every year – I thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever heard. There was a brief moment at the beginning where I thought it may have potential, as a TV reporter posits that The Purge was a way for the upper classes to kill off all the poor people as they have no means to protect themselves, but the film completely drops the ball and instead it is just a lame home-invasion flick you have already seen dozens of times.

The plot of the movie, what plot there is anyway, is that James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) has made quite a bit of money installing security systems on every house in his upscale neighborhood. This, for some inexplicable reason, has made the neighbors bitter of the Sandins. In the universe of the movie, not only is all crime legal, but nobody other than the Sandins young son Charlie (Max Burkholder) has any problem at all with it. While a neighbor is sharpening his machete outside, nobody is horrified that their neighbor is about to go slaughter somebody like he’s in a slasher flick. Just “hey it looks like Mr. Halverson is going to purge” as if he is taking his dog for a walk. After the Sandins lock the house down in preparation for The Purge, Charlie lets in a vagrant (black, natch) who symbolizes the “have nots” or “undesirables” that the rich are going out to kill. Now a gang of trust fund prep-school students (THE HORROR!) are demanding they release this “swine” for them to kill or they will break in to the home and kill all of them. These kids are all wearing cool scary looking masks so they don’t get recognized because all crime is legal and socially acceptable so it makes NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL.

Because the Sandins (other than Charlie) are very supportive of The Purge, it is hard to sympathize with them at all. They don’t feel bad for the homeless man or want to save him. He actually needs to try and escape from them so they don’t willingly hand him over to be slaughtered. While they attempt to make a point on this “Look at what you are doing!” this again gets dropped without taking it to it’s conclusion.

Let’s get back to the premise for a moment. When discussing how utterly stupid it was with some people, they thought it actually sounded kind of cool. Personally, I couldn’t separate completely from reality and how it was the dumbest idea ever to combat crime. But for a movie where you disconnect from all reality, I guess it could potentially be good in a post-apocalyptic-if-only-a-decade-from-now way. But the film doesn’t even do that. Yes, the crime is all legal, but nothing comes of it that couldn’t have happened by having the characters unable to call the police for whatever reason. Trust me, this movie could have come up with some dumb cliché to accomplish that. I mean it already has them cut off all electricity to the home and have a teenage girl hide under the bed only to look out and see a pair of shoes from a guy JUST ABOUT TO LOOK UNDER THE BED until they are distracted and walk away. Phew! That was a close one!

OK, but maybe it has really cool action or scary moments? I mean Fast & Furious 6 was extremely stupid and that movie kicked all sorts of ass. No. The action here is very anti-climactic and boring. There was a moment near the end that was supposed to make the audience cheer and instead the entire theater erupted in laughter. There are moments in these kind of movies all the time where you will hear scattered laughter at really dumb moments that are supposed to be climactic, but here the ENTIRE THEATER was laughing. And if you can’t figure out the “twist” 5 minutes into the movie, then it means you walked in 10 minutes late.

The acting here isn’t atrocious, it’s just there. Everybody is just going through the motions to get a quick paycheck. Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey just seem bored, and it is hard to blame them. The only potential saving grace here was Rhys Wakefield as the ringleader of the crazed preppy rich kids, but he is criminally underused and just wasted after a really good start. He seems to be the only one that really gave much of an effort, so it’s a shame he wasn’t given more to work with.

Conclusion [1.0 of 10.0]

Hey, the sound worked. You could understand dialogue. You could see what was happening. There weren’t two really long sex scenes with Tommy Wiseau in it. Hey, I’m trying to be positive here, ok? James DeMonaco wrote and directed the movie, and at times it seemed like he had a larger point he was trying to get across.  He either changed his mind, succumbed to studio pressure or just really sucks.  The movie was really that bad. And sadly, not in a “this is so bad it’s awesome” way. It’s just bad.