The Forever Purge

The Purge came out in 2013. It was a blunt and brutal allegory about the state of America at the time and struck a chord with genre audiences. Eight years, two presidents and one pandemic later we get The Forever Purge, the 5th film in a franchise that started feeling stale after part 3. It fails to strike that same chord this time around because real life has just gotten so much worse than any silly film.

Southern Texas, 2048. A totalitarian political party called The New Founding Fathers of America has staged a coup and took control of the US government 8 years after they were ousted from power. Their first move is to reinstate the Purge, a 12 hour period where all crime is legal, a move first introduced by them to allow an angry population to blow off steam. Each year the Purge has descended into horrific violence and now those who can afford to be are ready for it. The Tucker family has a state of the art security system on their ranch to keep them safe and father Dylan (Josh Lucas, wasted as a walking cliche who comes to respect those he once hated) is ready for anything. Not everyone is so safe though. Adela (Ana de la Reguera) and Juan (Tenoch Huerta), two undocumented immigrants from Mexico have just arrived into what's about to be a night of terror, especially when the marauding gangs are white nationalists who have anyone with dark skin in their sights. These same gangs have no intention of stopping after 12 hours either and their battle cries are about to be heard all across America.

This is the kind of film that would make you hope Donald Trump is a frequent cinema goer. There's always going to be a thrill imagining his reaction when a nazi with a swastika tattoo on his face gets his neck snapped by a black man or when a militant white supremacist gets a machete embedded in his head by a Mexican man on his way back across the border because the land of opportunity has turned out to be a shithole. The Purge has no qualms about painting the US of A as dystopian hell, a place where all of society's ills are the fault of outsiders, where roving gangs of racist gun toting lunatics, swathed in white power logos storm cities with no regard for law. We're supposed to be appalled by this imagery but think back to January 6th, 2021, Washington DC, it's all been done, in a switcheroo to the supposed effects of cinematic violence, real life has left us desensitized to what's happened onscreen. The Purge feels old hat now. Maybe it's time to give up and move on. Or, because there's already another on the way, up the ante. Go all out. Full exploitation. Embrace the grime and the viciousness of what's depicted. No half measures to quote himself in the silly hat. We can but hope.... but the world will probably be even worse again when it's released.

As an action thriller (the horror aspects of the earlier films are mostly phased out now) it's a decent enough watch though. It gives us a likable pair of characters (Adela & Juan) to root for and keeps them forever moving, always in danger but thankfully able to take care of themselves, across well crafted one take city battlegrounds and out into the Chihuahuan desert in a move that gives the climax of the film a nice western feel, especially in a moment that might remind you of the Alamo, but in reverse. Oh man, you can just hear the roars when this plays in a cinema in San Antonio. Arrows pierce, dynamite pulverises and bullets shatter and it's here that the film is at it's most satisfying. A revenge fantasy centuries in the making but only for a few short minutes sadly. Director Everardo Gout, making his feature film debut, has a good eye for action and hopefully away from this franchise he'll really make a mark.

The Forever Purge is in cinemas now. Purge completists will like it but at this stage it's time to change up totally or stop dead. The law of diminishing returns is well under way.