At one point in The Purge, a horror film in which Americans are legally allowed to commit crime one night per year, a character laments that things will never be the same ever again. The line is cringe-worthy given that the character just watched people she loves hurt somebody without hesitation, yet you don t know anyone in the film well enough to care one way or another, and the camera jiggled so much during the violence that you only got teasing, migraine-inducing impressions of the act.
Advertisement
Writer/director James DeMonaco, who previously scripted the surprisingly effective 2005 remake of John Carpenter s Assault on Precinct 13, cuts creative corners this way throughout The Purge. He often confuses economical story-telling with paint-by-numbers dialogue and vague characterizations. So instead of being a creepy B-movie about the necessity of suppressing one s animalistic urges, The Purge is just an uninspired film.