The Purge: Lose Character, Lose Message

Driving through a black wrought iron gate with a bouquet of flowers on the dashboard, it'd be easy to intuit that James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) is headed to a graveyard.  In all actuality, he's simply headed home to his upper class neighborhood after learning that he's the #1 ranked salesman of home security systems.  Considering what he and his family are about to go through in the upcoming annual Purge, a government sanctioned 12-hour time period where all crime – including murder – is legal, the graveyard guess isn't far off.

In the year 2020, The Purge is directly cited as the cause of America's staggeringly low 1% unemployment rate and the sharp decline in crime. Expository news channels and radio interviews conveniently overheard to indoctrinate viewers into this future America explain that The Purge benefits its citizens by giving them a consequence free evening to unleash all the hatred and negativity that had built up over the previous 364 days.

By planting a specific bouquet of flowers out on their lawn, any citizen can show their support for The Purge, but of course, as parents of children currently serving in the American military can tell you, there's a difference between supporting an action and participating in it. The Purge is only a concern for those who can't find shelter or get off the streets after 7PM, so the Sandins, barricaded inside their home behind the very security system that James has sold to the entire neighborhood, don't have any reason to fear the scheduled onslaught of violence.

Of course, with the ability to afford technologically advanced barricades on a house with a new addition perched amongst a gated community, The Purge isn't the only contemporary government decree that barely rock the Sandin's boat.  The opening 10 minutes of The Purge paint the entire Sandin family, vanilla housewife, Mary (Lena Headey); pouty teenager, Zoey (Adelaide Kane); and technophile, Charlie (Max Burkholder), as painfully suburban.  Charlie would rather fiddle with his inventions, Zoey would rather spend time with her boyfriend, Henry (Tony Oller), and while both James and Mary attempt to calmly and objectively espouse the benefits of The Purge to their apathetic children, their words never come across as anything other than perfunctory and half-believed. The Purge is, after all, just another form of class warfare and like most wealthy people involved in it, the Sandins are aware of the conflict without having any intimate involvement in it.

So when the lower class literally winds up on their door step in the form of a hunted homeless man (Edwin Hodge), the Sandins experience the warfare first hand when Charlie inexplicably gives the man asylum. The man's blood trail is followed by a group of young, masked aristocrats, given voice by an eloquent leader (Rhys Wakefield) who demands the family give up "the pig" or they'll force their way into the house.

The stranger's demands, calling for the blood of a nameless, homeless man who has done nothing aside from playing the shitty hand that life has dealt him, voices the horrifying implication behind a film that subsequently gives voice to a largely unspoken contemporary mentality towards class division. The Sandins only regurgitate the facts that the news tells them about The Purge, never having to have experienced it themselves, and when intruders break in directly involving them in the government sanctioned "cleansing," they're struck dumb and unprepared, having to decide between satisfying the demands of their immediate, figuratively faceless society or aiding the victim of a system for which they have shown support. On paper, the decision is an easy one to make, until one gets up close and personal with a victim.

The Purge excels at such subtext and is at its best in the scenes that speak directly on the implications and consequences of class warfare. Unfortunately, writer/directer James DeMonaco couldn't make a manifesto without some sort of narrative spine to support it and the execution of The Purge is significantly weaker than message behind it. While James, Mary, and their hollow, interchangeable neighbors provide enough fodder for drama; the rest of the supporting cast, especially the Sandin children, are largely narrative sinecures existing almost exclusively for manufactured drama when the family inexplicably is split up within their own house facing a deadly foe.  Yes, the homeless man's entry into the upscale home incites the entire film, but his entrance is a direct result of a solitary act of compassion from Charlie, whose motivations are never explored or explained as the film progresses.

The problem that subsequently emerges from the thinness of the supporting cast is that the resulting violence, though exciting in its execution, carries very little stakes because it doesn't ultimately matter who lives and who dies. Horror films live or die on the emotion that tethers an audience to the viscera. Without that connection, The Purge has to lean heavily on the crutch of its social commentary. While that is fascinating for someone looking for something a bit deeper, The Purge doesn't really have the brawn to match the brain and what could be a film worth talking about for years to come. But sadly, it is merely a breezy genre piece that is only interesting as opposed to great.