Review by Dustin Hall
The Purge: Anarchy is one of those rare sequels which, at least to my mind, we can pretty much universally agree is better than the first film. Set in the open world of the new Founding Fathers’ America, it escapes the confines of the home invasion motif in which the first film was trapped, and moves us out into a world that, for twelve hours every year, celebrates chaos. At times ham-fisted, at others implausible, this second Purge is however never boring and also stands surprisingly far above its predecessor.
The first Purge was, in many ways, a failure. It had an alarmingly big premise, one which really should have been moved further into the future to allow us to accept it. I refer to the notion of the American population allowing a day once per year to murder, rape, and steal with impunity, in the hopes that for the rest of the year, this ‘purging’ behaviour would allow crime to be eliminated. It’s a ridiculously large social concept, but as with other dystopian ideas – like one where everyone has to die at the age of thirty, or one where we have suicide booths set up to harvest people and turn their bodies into food – it’s really all about the personal story being told, and the metaphor that surrounds the characters. Unfortunately, the first Purge somehow took that metaphor, turned it into a one-off line about homeless people being parasites, and then fell into the trappings of a bland home invasion movie.
Not so in Anarchy. Here the world is filled with horror, intersecting plot-lines, and political commentary abounds throughout. The film follows three groups: a couple who are being hunted by a gang of masked killers, a mother and daughter on the run from a mysterious para-military group, and a man on a Purge of his own for vengeance. The three stories become one as the groups are herded together, and then to a common final destination, where they meet the true villains of the Purge. Though the political elements of the stories can get rather heavy-handed, it is this exploration which really turns this into something more than a typical horror movie; instead it recalls social activist armies from other sci-fi tales, like the recent Snowpiercer, or even the one from the sci-fi camp classic The Running Man.
In the end, The Purge: Anarchy is a natural expansion of the original idea, encompassing the exploration of the premise that the first film needed, but now joyfully unburdened with the need for any opening exposition about what the hell is going on in this future world. Instead, we get a film that jumps right into the action, and remains moving along with intent and intensity for all but a few misstep-minutes of its runtime. While the film still is not as bloody or horrific as the premise could really allow it to be, it still packs enough of a punch, still allows the audience to feel a sense of investment in the characters on offer.
The ideas contained in the film will be divisive for the audience, especially with how much more exploration of the political landscape there is here compared to the first Purge. The political stance of this movie would make Ayn Rand have a coronary. If that’s not a turn off for you, then The Purge: Anarchy is worth checking out.
The Purge: Anarchy is out now in the US, Canada and parts of Europe, and opens in the UK and Ireland on 25th July, via Universal.