The Purge: Anarchy movie review (2014) | Little White Lies

The Purge: Anarchy

24 Jul 2014 / Released: 25 Jul 2014

Words by David Ehrlich

Directed by James DeMonaco

Starring Carmen Ejogo, Frank Grillo, and Zach Gilford

Two people wearing creepy masks with sinister expressions, set against a dark background.
Two people wearing creepy masks with sinister expressions, set against a dark background.
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Anticipation.

The Purge movie that the original only promised to be.

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Enjoyment.

It almost feels as if this year’s Purge is being shown in real-time.

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In Retrospect.

The politics are surprisingly complex, in the way that a jigsaw puzzle missing its biggest pieces is hard to solve.

This rush-job sequel does a stir­ling job of con­sis­tent­ly bungling its intrigu­ing premise.

The sequel to last summer’s most strik­ing­ly prof­itable film, The Purge: Anar­chy expands on the scale of its pre­de­ces­sor while still con­tin­u­ing the franchise’s proud tra­di­tion of mak­ing the least of its premise, this hasti­ly pro­duced sec­ond instal­ment find­ing an impres­sive num­ber of new ways to humil­i­ate and dis­cred­it the series’ intrigu­ing cen­tral conceit.

Set in a dystopi­an future in which crime has been all but erad­i­cat­ed because Amer­i­cans are allowed 12 hours every year in which to release the beast” (the government’s offi­cial slo­gan) and cleanse them­selves of their most vio­lent desires, The Purge series is poten­tial­ly fas­ci­nat­ing because of how it resists and com­pli­cates the obvi­ous dynam­ics of its sup­posed genre.

The first film was a home inva­sion sto­ry that upend­ed the sense of safe­ty that a wealthy fam­i­ly had bought for them­selves. It was like an unusu­al­ly hos­tile episode of The Twi­light Zone punc­tu­at­ed with blood­shed and jump scares, it began as a fan­ta­sy before end­ing as a hor­ror movie. The sequel, which takes place exact­ly one year after the events of the orig­i­nal, flips that idea on the hol­low side of its head, begin­ning as a hor­ror movie and slow­ly (so slow­ly) mor­ph­ing into a clas­si­cal fantasy.

Direct­ed with even less grace and nuance than series archi­tect James DeMona­co blessed the franchise’s con­tained first chap­ter, Anar­chy once again finds Amer­i­ca gid­di­ly on the precipice of anoth­er nation­al slaugh­ter. It’s near­ly sun­down on Purge Night, and the strict­ly strat­i­fied pop­u­lace is begin­ning to scat­ter into their respec­tive ratholes. Radio pro­pa­gan­da preach­es that every­one should be grate­ful for the orgy of vio­lence, and that the coast-to-coast cathar­sis is the only thing hold­ing this coun­try together.

Shane and Liz (Zach Gil­ford and Kiele Sanchez) are the two least inter­est­ing humans on this mor­tal coil, the fact that they have sur­vived the first five purges is proof enough that the sys­tem is flawed. For rea­sons that the film doesn’t even attempt to jus­ti­fy or explain, the cou­ple – who are in the midst of a break-up — have wait­ed until the hour before the Purge begins to dri­ve to their safe house. When their car breaks down in the mid­dle of the point­ed­ly gener­ic city just min­utes before the Purge begins, the set­up feels less dystopi­an than it does Dar­win­ian. This isn’t a por­trait of the One Per Cent, it’s a human ver­sion of that scene in Juras­sic Park where­in a goat is low­ered into the T‑Rex pen, and we’re in the Jeep with a pair of binoculars.

Else­where in the city, a work­ing class wait­ress named Eva (Car­men Ejo­go) and her daugh­ter find them­selves being hunt­ed by a group of extreme­ly well-armed sol­diers. Both groups of inno­cents soon find them­selves under the wing of Leo Barnes (Frank Gril­lo), an iron-jawed anti-hero whose pro­tec­tive instincts are at odds with his venge­ful agen­da. Anar­chy sore­ly miss­es the grav­i­tas that Ethan Hawke brought to the orig­i­nal. Frank Gril­lo is a ris­ing star whose blunt charis­ma belies his age, but the rest of the cast is so ser­vice­ably low-rent that the movie smacks of the cheap­ness that the best of Jason Blum’s films have suc­ceed­ed by disguising.

On some lev­el, the film works because con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca is this much of a car­toon. In a coun­try where the top 1% make almost 20 per cent of the income, it shouldn’t be a sur­prise that there’s such a thin line between satire and real­i­ty. While Anarchy’s com­men­tary couldn’t be more obvi­ous, the cathar­sis that alleged­ly jus­ti­fies its premise is made real by its audi­ence who have two — not 12 — hours each year to indulge in their fan­tasies, the film offer­ing all the joys of class war­fare that a movie tick­et can buy.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Anarchy’s polit­i­cal dis­course is failed by its schlock, rather than the oth­er way around. The action sequences are unin­spir­ing, the dis­or­der in the streets far too sane and sedate – Gril­lo and the rag­tag bunch of char­ac­ters he leads to safe­ty are pal­pa­bly vul­ner­a­ble, yet the per­ils they encounter are too gener­ic for a night that’s sup­pos­ed­ly one of a kind. Bathed in the grungy dark­ness of a film that’s always ugly with­out ever being inter­est­ing­ly so, DeMonaco’s sequel is overea­ger to feed the ter­ror of its scenes to the silli­ness of its premise.

It doesn’t help that Anar­chy is pitched to the very back of the class, the script mak­ing it so abun­dant­ly clear that the Purge is actu­al­ly a flim­sy psy­cho­log­i­cal con­struct designed to con­trol the pop­u­la­tion, clip the low­er class, and spark the econ­o­my, that it becomes impos­si­ble to fath­om how any­one with­in the world of the film would fail to see through it, them­selves. And that holds dou­bly true for its audi­ence – there’s some real cathar­sis to be found in this bloody slice of reverse pover­ty porn, but the answers come so easy that you can’t shake the feel­ing this is less of a fun­house mir­ror than it is a fairytale.

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