Friends, I do not like scary movies. At all. I do not like little toy dolls with hauntingly lifelike eyes staring at me while I sleep. I do not like watching them stare at other people while they sleep. I do not want to see someone being chased through backwoods by a masked guy with a chainsaw. It's just not my thing. The horrible, gruesome things that happen in scary movies stick with me for a long time. I can't just walk out of the theater or find something different on Netflix and forget what I just saw. Example, I saw only the trailer for the first "Human Centipede" movie and had nightmares for a month -- from the trailer. So no, horror movies are not my jam.
That being said, the "Purge" trilogy (so far) is one of my favorite movie series of the past three years. The first one, I will admit, was not as fleshed out as the second two have been. I think the creators of the film had this awesome idea for this new brand of horror that didn't fully flesh out within the first film. Thankfully, they got their footing and the most recent two installations have been great.
"The Purge: Election Year," which was released to theaters on July 1 of this year, is a feat of modern cinema. That is a sweeping and grandiose statement, yes. But I left the theater feeling like I had just been through hell and back myself, so I say that if it could do that, it was a pretty good movie. Without spoiling any of the major twists and turns (of which there are many), "The Purge: Election Year" picks up where "The Purge: Anarchy" left off. An upstart, bespectacled senator is trying to dismantle and de-legalize the Purge, a 'holiday' created by her opposition in which every crime is legal and encouraged for 12 hours once every year. She was a victim of one 'purger's' cruel games 18 years before the start of the film and she uses that, and the help she finds throughout the night, to forward her cause.
On the surface, "The Purge" plays into the animalistic relationship humans have with fear. There are some pop-out scares and scenes of bloody brutality that characterize a night where citizens go out and murder each other. One scene of the movie even showcases a man shouting, "The purge is Halloween for adults!" But underneath that, "The Purge" is a social commentary. This third movie peels back what was established during the second movie and looks deeper into why the purge was instated in the first place. It is established as much more than just a holiday to keep crime rates down -- it involves factors that are major political and social hot topics in our real, physical lives today such as police brutality and the growing social divide between socioeconomic classes.
The creators of this series, mainly writer-director James DeMonaco, upped their game significantly with "The Purge: Election Year." Even if you aren't a fan of horror movies, or are staunchly against them like I am normally, I recommend this one.
