This is the best part of the movie
Forgive my vulgarity in this post but...what a pile of maggot sucking horseshit. Seriously, how could a movie with such an interesting be so damn horrible?
First of all, the poster says "from the producer of Paranormal Activity and Sinister", two films made on miniscule budgets that wound up making tons of money. Sure enough, The Purge was made on a budget of about $3 million with the agreement that profits would be split up accordingly, most notably to lead actor Ethan Hawke. Let me just say this to Jason Blum or whatever the hell this producer's name is...you've trolled Hollywood long enough. You've shown you can make huge sums of money without investing a lot. But it's time to start putting MONEY INTO YOUR FUCKING MOVIES!!
How could a movie like this be so horrible? Let's go through the list:
1) First of all, the concept of a 12 hour period where all crime is legal is really, really hard to pull off but there's also a lot of different directions it could go. Why they chose to confine this entire movie to a house, other than the producer being too much of a little bitch to invest some money in this, is beyond me.
2) What the fuck is this shit?
???
I spent the whole movie trying to figure out what this Timmy nonsense was and I still have no idea, other than perhaps it indicates that the boy is schizophrenic.
3) Ethan Hawke plays a security system salesman, selling Purge-specific systems and it's found out early on that he's the number 1 guy for selling these things. Keep this in mind.
Hey, Wanda Sykes is in this movie
4) The Annual Purge starts at 7 PM on March 21st and the Sandin family is calmly eating dinner without a care in the world until 6:58 PM. So shit's about to go down and these people are just like whaaaa???
5) Henry appears out of nowhere and pulls Zoey onto the bed. Who didn't see that one coming?
6) What the hell is up with Charlie's hiding place? What relevance does this have at all to the story other than being a convenient spot to, uh, navigate your remote controlled baby doll tank from.
7) Okay, so Henry's plan to win over his underage girlfriend is to fucking shoot her father? Is this guy's head so far up Carrot Top's ass that he actually thinks that's a good idea? And Zoey doesn't even check on her father after the shootout.
8) Why the hell does Charlie disarm the security system and let the Stranger in? Like, I get that he doesn't like the Purge (neither do I, it's a shitty movie) but, like, there's some missing character development here to completely buy that he'd let this stranger in.
8b) Why does the stranger decide to stop in the middle of the neighborhood street and scream for help? If you're being pursued by a Hummer loaded with members of the Manson Family then wouldn't it be best to STAY OFF the roads and RUN SOMEWHERE AND HIDE rather than stopping in the middle of the street and announcing yourself?
9) Why does the stranger randomly run off after he's already in the house? Why doesn't he just explain what's going on? Why is this stranger such a jackass?
10) Massive Plot Hole: OK, so Mary Sandin (the mom) is very secure in her home but when things start to get a little rough outside she proclaims "Purging doesn't happen in this neighborhood!" Now, as Ethan Hawke was driving up to his house in the beginning we got a good look at said neighborhood. Pretty upscale, right? Like, mansions. Which means this is likely a pricey part of town, yes? So then WHY is there a PSYCHOTIC army of zit-popping fuckfaces hunting down HOMELESS people in the same area??? Even Malibu I'm sure has its homeless people but if you're gonna go all Manson Family and "purge" the streets then you're sure as shit not gonna do it in an upscale area where you're unlikely to find a lot of homeless people.
11) Why the fuck are the zit-popping fuckfaces wearing masks anyway?
Hey, you let the stranger in, so why not let these fine, friendly individuals hang out with you for a little bit?
12) Better yet, why the fuck isn't THIS guy wearing a mask?
I am Cornholio!
13) Why the hell would it take an hour for reinforcements for breaking into secure homes to arrive? The Purge starts every year at the exact same time. Why do you need an extra hour?
14) OK, so, Ethan Hawke sells Purge security systems, right? And he's the best in the business. He's even sold security systems to all of his neighbors en route to being named #1. But then after the Stranger enters the house and the Manson Family arrives do we find out that the security systems DON'T REALLY DO ANYTHING! They're a DETERRENT! I mean yeah, the steel plates in front of the windows I guess help a little bit, but they don't cover "worst case scenarios" as he explains. Well slap my ass and call me Bob...HEY ETHAN?!?!?! ISN'T THE PURGE KIND OF A WORST CASE SCENARIO?! WOULDN'T YOU WANT YOUR SECURITY SYSTEM TO WORK ON THE NIGHT THAT ALL CRIME IS LEGAL?!?!?!? OUTSIDE OF WORLD WAR II I CAN'T THINK OF ANOTHER SITUATION WHERE I'D MOST WANT THE SECURITY SYSTEM TO ACTUALLY WORK!!!
15) But it doesn't stop there. Not even Ethan Hawke's own home has a legit security system. His own FUCKING HOME!!! This guy makes millions and millions of dollars and builds on extra rooms to his already massive mansion yet he doesn't think, hey, even though I'm scamming everyone with these half-assed security systems, maybe, just maybe, I should get a REAL one for my family. I mean, it takes the Manson Family about three seconds to cut his electricity off. How the hell has this guy been able to sell so many of these bullshit security systems? Is America really that much dumber in 2022 that nobody sees how crappy these things are?
16) "We have tested the system. It works 99% of the time. It looks good. It's strong. They'll stay away." So your entire research and testing method is based off your product looking good and 99% of the time it...looks good? Did someone really write this shit?
17) For a while there's a whole lot of nothin' going on. Ethan Hawke sneaks around armed with a gun, Mary sneaks around armed with a gun, Charlie picks his nose, Zoey is off doing who the hell knows what, the Stranger is snooping around the house when he should be hiding, and for whatever reason the Manson Family are making violent gestures at the security cameras because they're totally insane and make no sense.
18) So the anti-climactic last third of the movie consists of the Manson Family breaking in and bullets go flying, Ethan Hawke gets stabbed by Charlie Manson himself, but then, THEN, the big twist comes. See, the NEIGHBORS enter the house packing heat and take out the rest of the Manson's and for a second we think they're the heroes but no, they're actually just there to murder the Sandin's themselves so, naturally, they had to get rid of the fuckfaces. Does that make any sense? Of course not, because it's so damn dumb.
19) Okay, so, while Ethan Hawke is badly wounded, the neighbors for whatever reason tie the mother and children up. Why? I don't know. They're about to murder them but apparently they've just gotta be tied up because that buys some time. But duh, of course they don't get to murder them because the Stranger comes in at the last second in, like, the third saved-at-the-last-second sequence and saves the day.
20) Why do the neighbors want the Sandin's dead? Well, because Ethan Hawke sold them security systems and that made him wealthy so he was able to build more rooms into his house. Yeah. Seriously. They buy his shit and make him rich and are mad about it so they kill him. Right.
"I baked you some cookies and, oh, I'm gonna kill you later!"
As I mentioned, this movie was made on a budget of about $3 million but it may as well have been made for strips of regurgitated pork fat. Generally if you've got a smallass budget then your strengths should be overwhelmingly placed in your script and/or your acting. The acting actually wasn't horrible here, but the script is just, well, it's dogshit. Too many plot holes, too many cliches, too many questions of "wait, why did that happen?!"
The problem is that the otherwise big concept is contained entirely into this small budget, single location movie. That's not necessarily a bad thing but you've gotta be more bold about it. For one night all crime is legal. Obviously the movie touches on murder, especially murder between acquaintances. But what about rape? Arson? Vandalism? Terrorism? Drug trafficking? Human trafficking? What about the collateral damage that would come from the Purge and inevitably effect the other 364.5 days in the year? What if all of Downtown Los Angeles is blown up during the Purge and there's nothing left? I know the movie states nothing higher than a class 4 weapon can be used (which is a made up phrase for the movie, so presumably class 4 is probably a shotgun or assault rifle or something), but since all crime is legal, why the hell should anyone follow those rules? Who's gonna enforce it?
These are the kinds of questions that should have been approached but instead were completely avoided. Obviously the budget doesn't indicate how good a movie is going to be, but for something like this I think it should have been a much bigger production than it was.
So, to producer Jason Blum: IT'S TIME TO START INVESTING IN YOUR MOVIES AGAIN!!!
The Purge - what a horrible movie.