Purge, The: Anarchy (Blu-ray / DVD)
Starring Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo, Zach Gilford, Kiele Sanchez, Zoë Soul, Justina Machado, John Beasley, Jack Conley
Written and directed by James DeMonaco
Distributed by Universal
“This is not a test. This is your Emergency Broadcast System announcing the commencement of the Annual Purge sanctioned by the U.S. Government. Weapons of Class 4 and lower have been authorized for use during the Purge. All other weapons are restricted. Government officials of ranking 10 have been granted immunity from the Purge and shall not be harmed. Commencing at the siren, any and all crime, including murder, will be legal for twelve continuous hours. Police, fire, and emergency medical services will be unavailable until tomorrow morning at 7 a.m., when The Purge concludes. Blessed be our New Founding Fathers and America, a nation reborn. May God be with you all.”
So begins the 2023 Purge, the annual event that has made everything in the New America that much better. And it is a good one. The Purge: Anarchy is a sequel that does what we always hope a sequel will do (but rarely ever manages to accomplish): It enhances the original story while providing a new tale that builds on the foundation laid by the original movie.
The Purge was a simple story built on a very intriguing concept. And it was the original concept (and a pretty impressive marketing campaign) that drew audiences to The Purge. We all imagined how we would respond to 12 solid hours of lawlessness. An interesting idea, indeed. And the first film was okay. Although surprisingly slow in points and painfully predictable, The Purge did manage to introduce a reality where this 12-hour, crime-free span of time existed, and The Purge: Anarchy capitalized on it.
If you want to really boil things down, The Purge: Anarchy is probably more purely an action film than a horror movie, but the concept and the second half of the movie that’s reminiscent to The Running Man or the business side of Hostel do a commendable job of adding a horrific element to the movie. There’s also an uber-creepy skater gang, and the underlying fact that anyone can kill you at any time in any way they choose does help lean The Purge: Anarchy back into the horror genre. The sequel also has off-putting masked marauders as we saw in the original, but somehow these baddies seem much badder than the prep school blazer-wearing blue bloods in the original film. The gritty, city-dwelling purgers of this new movie are definitely more unsettling.
Where the original movie focused on one particular household during The Purge, The Purge: Anarchy is comprised of three separate stories that converge during the movie and bring several strangers together on the streets in the middle of the annual Purge with nothing but survival on their minds and no one to rely on but each other. However, one Mad Max-ish roving gang after another make survival one damn difficult goal to achieve in the year 2023.
In addition to expanding the story to include three separate groups of people dealing with the Purge, the new film seriously evolves the story, explaining why these things are happening, what The Purge means to society, and what the government’s (i.e., the New Founding Fathers’) role is in the annual event. As you would hope a sequel would do, The Purge: Anarchy successfully grows the story, making the audience aware of what’s going on and thereby making things that much more enjoyable and relatable.
All this being said, we do have to mention that The Purge: Anarchy, for the most part, is more of an action film. It feels like a Stallone-enegger 80’s shoot-’em-up, like Commando or Cobra, more than a horror movie like The Strangers, which the original marketing campaign for The Purge greatly resembled. That’s not necessarily a bad thing since action movies are great at keeping audiences riveted to the screen, but there isn’t a real genre element introduced until the final sequence of the movie, and even then it’s a stretch to call it horror.
In terms of special features, there are only two to be found: around seven minutes of deleted scenes and a thirteen-minute behind-the-scenes featurette featuring cast and crew interviews.
In all, The Purge: Anarchy is an entertaining movie. It takes an intriguing concept introduced in the original and succeeds in not only expanding on the idea, but producing a superior picture as well that definitely keeps audiences intrigued throughout. It’s not a true horror flick. Nothing here is really going to scare you or creep you out, aside from thinking about how some of the things you see in the movie could conceivably happen in our society. Other than that, there isn’t much to be scared of here. But it is a movie that is loaded with thrills that will certainly keep you intrigued throughout.
Special Features:
- Behind the Anarchy featurette
- Deleted scenes
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Film
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Special Features
Categorized:Reviews
