Home-security expert James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) tries to protect his family from outside forces in THE PURGE
THE PURGE (James DeMonaco, 2013)
Opens Friday, June 7
www.blumhouse.com
Yes, the central plot is absurd and the plot twists are ridiculously stupid, but the home-invasion thriller The Purge still manages to keep things tense and exciting up to the very last minute. It’s 2022, and the New Founding Fathers have turned the night after the vernal equinox into twelve hours of murder and mayhem known as the Purge, when people can release their inner demons and get out all the rage that has built up inside them during the rest of the year, which is filled with peace and tranquillity. From 7:00 pm to 7:00 am, Americans are allowed to commit any crimes they want, without any consequences, which has been a boon for James Sandin (Ethan Hawke), who has done very well for himself and his family — wife Mary (Lena Headey, Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones), teenage daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane), and young tech wizard Charlie (Max Burkholder) — selling high-end security systems to his friends and neighbors who opt not to take part in the annual ritual, instead staying inside their well-protected expensive homes in their gated community and watching the events unfold on television. But things go terribly wrong when Zoe’s boyfriend, Henry (Tony Oller), sneaks into the house and Charlie decides to help out a troubled man running through the streets (Edwin Hodge as “Bloody Stranger”). The man is being chased by a group led by a crazy masked dude (Rhys Wakefield as “Polite Stranger”) who threatens to tear down the Sandins’ house and kill everyone inside if they don’t deliver the Bloody Stranger to them. Written and directed by James DeMonaco, The Purge works best when it doesn’t attempt to make any grand statements about racism, greed, justice, violence, and the haves and the have-nots, instead just concentrating on the intense action. It’s a combination of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers, David Fincher’s Panic Room, and the 2005 remake of Assault on Precinct 13 —which was written by DeMonaco and starred Hawke as well. (The two also teamed up on DeMonaco’s feature debut, 2009’s Little New York.) And while The Purge might lack the depth of each of those films, it tends to hang in there; every time it is about to descend into complete and utter inanity, it does something that rescues it from the abyss opening beneath it — and the audience.