The Forever Purge - Movie Review

Critics Score - 4

General Audience Score - 6

Since The Purge first hit theaters and brought financial success back in 2013, Universal Studios has cranked out a film for the franchise almost every other year since it’s inauguration. While the original film had an interesting enough premise of temporary legalized crime and Ethan Hawke to lead the charge, the rest of the series has floundered at attempts to recapture that creativity and put different spins on the “Purge World”. The new film in the series The Forever Purge, is more of the same, heavy on the action and ultraviolence, light on script, character development and plot holes all over the place. The movie plays fast and the hour and fifty minute run breezes by with action and firefights aplenty but anyone in search of commentary on anything deeper need look further. The film hints around at addressing topics of prejudice, inequality and racial violence but if you want to get anything more than a fix of action and killings out of this Purge movie, you’ll be waiting Forever.

SYNOPSIS - As the film opens we meet a Hispanic couple Adela (Ana de la Reguera) and Juan (Tenoch Huerta) as they cross vía underground tunnels from Mexico into the United States. We skip forward ten months and it’s time for the Texas town they now inhabit to have the annual Purge, a day when all crime, including murder, is legalized. Juan works at a well-to-do ranch with horses, the owner Caleb Tucker (Will Patton) is a kind man who gives the Hispanic workers a purge protection bonus while the son Dylan (Josh Tucker) is content to throw snide comments and glaring looks at Juan, this is the point at which we discern race and prejudice are plot points. They all lock down, the sun sets and then rises in the east and the Purge concludes without incident. Adela and Juan head back to their jobs, with ominous TV reports of violence continuing in certain areas. Juan and his friend arrive at the ranch to find some of the bitter Mexican workers have taken the Tuckers hostage and declared they're taking over the ranch and are part of a "Forever Purge". Adela manages to escape from two people in costumes that probably watch too much Donnie Darko outside her job, but many of the horror movie victim tropes start popping up and leave you scratching your head at the decisions these people are making. Juan helps the Tuckers escape as the reports of anarchy continue, they go to meet Adela and head for the Mexico border as riots continue and chaos ensues in most major cities.

After we've witnessed two or three people get killed in super humane and merciful ways, we're left wondering what exactly the point of it all was, if we even bother to ponder it at all. There is certainly a place for films that feature action and violence as part of just a fun time at the movies, but this film frustratingly feels like it's trying to say something. Tucker at one point is asked if he hates Mexicans and says that races should just leave each other alone and Juan says, "But we are together now." End scene. This is a prime example of the films willingness to touch on important issues but back away from them almost as quickly and retreat back into it's studio's boundaries of what's acceptable and unacceptable topics for discussion in big budget film. It's infuriating. While this film will satisfy almost anybody's desire for bloodletting with some intense and well constructed fights, it's relatively tame in any of it's efforts to go into the horror aspects that some of it's predecessors tackled more effectively. It's also got a decent enough score and sound work with some pretty impressive production design as well. The performances were mostly decent enough as well but they make so many silly decisions and with the rest of the movie not going in any interesting or inventive directions, it's hard to care what becomes of these sometimes clueless characters.

SUMMARY - Let’s face it, nobody is looking for something deep and meaningful out of a Purge film, and that’s fine, plenty of good films rely solely on satisfying our need for a dumb, I don't want to think about this, action film. But this movie acts like it wants to say something, we see the border wall, there’s MAGA style quotes and dialogue as well as subtle references to January 6th, even though the film was supposed to come out the year before. Ultimately The Forever Purge exists Forever in the lane of it's franchise's mantra, same old shit, different Purge day.