Mass shootings as reality TV . . . who’d believe it?
The First Purge (18) Verdict: Urban horror thriller THIS fourth movie in The Purge pulp horrorthriller series should probably have the words ‘inspired by real events’ after the title. The Purge is fictional: a night when Americans can kill each other without judicial consequences, but many scenes here look disturbingly like recent news footage.
Gun attacks on African-American churches by white men in Ku Klux Klan hoods mirror the Charleston Church shooting by an Aryan supremacist, and the opening montage shows the US in crisis, with rising unemployment, a sub-prime mortgage crisis, and Black Lives Matter banners carried by protesting crowds.
The solution, according to the fictional president of the New Founding Fathers of America, is to allow citizens one night of mass revenge. The test ground will be Staten Island, New York.
The First Purge is a prequel to the bloodspattered series, which generally features irate folk in Halloween disguises laying siege to their neighbours, or shooting their enemies, in a governmentsanctioned night of mayhem.
This time, rich citizens leave Staten Island for safety, but the black and Hispanic community stays, thanks to a ‘life-changing’ offer of $5,000 from the government, which wants to prove the experiment will be psychologically cathartic.
The entire ‘show’ is filmed for social media by drones, security cameras and through camera contact lenses worn by citizens who have plans for crime and carnage.
Of the stars, Y’Lan Noel does a Die Hard number, all muscles in a vest, as a gangster turned hero, and Lex Scott Davis is his former girlfriend.
Her brother is Joivan Wade, and Marisa Tomei plays the psychologist in charge of the doomed experiment.
The action is competently overseen by African American director Gerard McMurray, and like Black Panther, this new take makes an old story freshly resonant.