Director: Gerard
McMurray
Notable Cast: Y’Lan
Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade, Mugga, Christian Robinson, Lauren Velez,
Kristen Solis, Marisa Tomei, Patch Darragh, Maria Rivera, Chyna Layne, Siya,
Melonie Diaz, Mo McRae, Steve Harris
The Purge franchise, for all of its faults and flaws,
remains one of the more intriguing genre series to come out in the last handful
of years. It had a very silly (and quite frankly, awful) first entry, but its
surprise box office success allowed writer and director James DeMonaco to
embrace the outlandish socio-political commentary with a vigor that made the
following two sequels, Anarchy and Election Year, genre pleasures for many
fans. Love them or hate them, they made money and DeMonaco did an admirable job
at delivering fun genre action while adding in a less than subtle commentary
about the current state of politics in doing so. The problem that came to be is
that the third film, Election Year,
essentially wrapped up the series leaving a bit of room for expansion, but hardly
paved the way for a full follow up. Thus, we got The First Purge, a prequel about the first ‘experiment’ on Staten
Island that would allow the New Founding Fathers the information to push the
Purge to the full country.