The First Purge (Part 1 of 2)

The First Purge (Part 1 of 2)

To tell you the truth, I actually liked this movie and the last one as well. Due to the stupid premise of the Purge franchise, I hated the first two movies.  I have always felt the concept of the Purge doesn't make sense. By contrast, this prequel goes into the history of the first Purge. The movie first starts out as a stalker flick, but the narrative turns into a social commentary without it seeming too preachy. From there, the movie turns into a confined action thriller. Unlike the first two Purge movies, these stories work here. James DeMonaco and Gerard McMurray did a good job with the movie on a popcorn level.   

Like the last Purge movie, the action scenes are exciting and are pretty gritty. The only issue I had with the action is a certain scene with drones. It felt cheap and a need for the story to get rid of a bunch of side characters in one swoop. Instead of killing them off one by one in the final act, they get rid of them in a drone attack. Thus, the movie makers robbed us of a final western type shootout with the groups. I wanted to see the gangsters fight the hired mercs.  Did the studio run out of money and they needed this quick fix? 

While the concept of the Purge is still silly, the movie goes out of its way to make the idea of purging your deeper instincts helps you in overall. I didn't buy the idea in the first movie. I believe they had the idea before thinking clearly how it would work out. I could see a mind-control thing and purge on that one day can help society keep control over the population. As the series progressed, we find out that the Purge is a way to keep certain groups down. It is also a manner for the government to control the population and wipe out groups using the Purge as a cover. This and the last movie do a better job of these concepts. 

Being that it is a prequel, it does fall into some of the prequel issues that other franchises have to deal with.  We know that the Purge will succeed.  However, it is nice to see just how these Founding Fathers came into power.  It seems the Reps and Dems have been pushed aside and the more conservative group took power.  Was this a take on the former Tea Party?  Remember them?   

The balance between social commentary is handled pretty well with the franchise’s horror roots.  The movie also embraces the more Asian action movies of late and the movie is heavily influenced by The Raid.   Again, the weaker aspects are the storytelling elements.  You can see the ban-aids on the various stories.