Reviews Film / The Purge

This felt like one of Film Brain's movie beatdowns, and it covered everything I found wrong with this movie (just in the premise!) Well done~

What are you talking about? During the Purge, nobody is safe, and everybody is a target. I don't see the racism here. The great thing about The Purge is that it takes the human horror genre to the next level

Here's one thing I missed: the whole reason why society can just go back to normal after 12 hours of anarchy and chaos. Let me break it down:

Granted, the vast majority of people would not turn into a rape, robbery, and murder loving psychopath just because there's no one to stop them (I have faith in my fellow humans), but even one guy could cause a lot of damage.

Say a guy decides to go break some windows. By a conservative estimate of one window a minute as an average rate of vandalism, at 12 hours that's 720 windows. Times $348 per window that's $250,560 in damage. A quarter million dollars in damage by one person. Even if as little as .1% of the US population right now (317 million divided by 1,000 equals 317,000 people) gave into criminal urges during the Purge, that's $79,427,520,000 in damages per year.

For reference Hurricane Katrina caused 108 billion dollars in damage (go on page 9), and there are still some people who haven't recovered. What problems would be solved by allowing damage of that magnitude every year?

Say a guy decides to go break some windows. By a conservative estimate of one window a minute as an average rate of vandalism, at 12 hours that's 720 windows.

I think that since ALL crimes are legal, that guy would be lucky to last an hour before some homeowner blasts his brains out. In fact, the film's greatest failure is that it completely fails to explore the Panopticon-like effects of its scenario: if you go out to commit crimes on the night EVERYBODY expects you to, you automatically place yourself in the firing line for everyone else as soon as you actually do it. Thus, the "lone wolves" would get ground to dust, and the only ones to prosper would be the groups with the highest level of organisation.

However, that sets up another conundrum: the people with a modicum of common sense WOULDN'T wait till that one night to organise. They would spent months, and maybe even the entire year in between, on planning out their actions, essentially creating paramilitary militia for the night. This would inevitably detract from productivity and result in economic damage all on its own. Worse (or better, depending on your worldview) such groups' bonds would grow stronger with every year, and instead of society going back to normal "purged" of undesirables, you would end up with the complete breakdown of the country as the militias you forment will stop obeying the government and take over their chunks of the city.

I don't get the rage in this review. Most of your points aren't even valid.

I thought this review posed a number of questions the movie never bothers to answer. Kind of ruins the immersion when every five seconds another giant plothole jumps out that we're asked to never think about.

Mind saying which points you don't think are valid?

A few problems I've had with the premise:

Politicians and the very people allowing this can try to set rules to protect themselves all they want, but the fact of the matter is, if people can commit crimes without impunity or fear of being caught it's eventually going to catch up to them somehow. History as shown that angry mobs have been kind of bad for governments.

Based on some examples I know, I don't think the emergency services are all just going to voluntarily shut down because someone told them too. Some are in their chosen careers because they genuinely want to help and protect people. I doubt they'd just stand by and let innocents fall victim to the purge, even if it means becoming a Cowboy Cop or taking an Inconvenient Hippocratic Oath.

Finally, there's the thing nobody seems to be asking about. If all crimes are equal it would mean crimes even more heinous then murder. The premise seems to depend on the public being totally O.K. with child sex predators having open season on their own families, which even for rich bastards still goes against basic parental instincts.

"I don't get the rage in this review. Most of your points aren't even valid."

Sure they are. Know how I know? Because if they weren't, you'd actually be able to offer counterpoints, instead of just saying "Nuh uh." Since you can't, he must have a point.

@Austin Flat "What."

He's only saying they're invalid because he doesn't like that he gave the film a negative review. If there was an actual problem with his points, he'd be able to actually give counterarguments. As it is, it's nothing more than Complaining About People Liking The Show.

Just because KBSL doesn't have counterpoints doesn't mean that the reviewer's points are valid just because of that.

But if KBSL doesn't give any evidence it doesn't disprove the points either.

Plus lets be real, this isn't biting satire. This movie plays it about as straight as it can.

If you want to debate an opinion, go ahead. But don't just say "Nuh uh!" then run off. It's childish and adds nothing to the conversation.