‘If you open the door a crack to it, it’ll bust the door down’
As the latest film in The Purge franchise arrives in cinemas, Danielle de Wolfe speaks to the film’s cast and crew to find out more. The annual purge: a national holiday in which the laws of civilised society do not apply. For a 12-hour period, the emergency services ignore your calls, the streets swarm with masked anarchists out for blood and your neighbours will inevitably turn on you in a bid to settle longstanding disputes.
A single day in which society vents its aggression without repercussions – the success of horror franchise The Purge in many ways hinges on the catharsis audiences can experience living vicariously through its characters.
Despite painting an extreme image of what lawless social cleansing might look like, the build-up of anger and aggression depicted in The Purge films can feel a little relatable to many argues franchise producer Jason Blum.
“It’s one of the few franchises where each sequel has outperformed the prior movie, which is almost unheard of in any franchise,” says Blum, 52, a three-time Oscar nominee best known for his work on 2017 horror Get Out and 2018’s BlacKkKlansman.
“It’s a cathartic way to deal with our frustration and anger at what’s going on… You can either literally fight back, in which case you’d go to jail, or you can watch a Purge movie, which is a lot safer,” says the producer with a laugh.
The fifth instalment in The Purge franchise, The Forever Purge, led by Mars director Everardo Valerio Gout, follows a group of tearaway militants residing in the south of Texas.
Depicting a reality in which a section of the population chooses to ignore the reinstatement of the law following 12 hours of bloodshed, the storyline illustrates the inevitable erosion of boundaries stemming from the escalating violence.
“You can only contain anarchy and chaos for a certain amount of years,” reflects Blum.
“If you open the door a crack to it, it’ll bust the door down.
“The purge is life outside the door, not just life outside the door for 12 hours a year,” he continues, noting that “all bets are off ” when it comes to the latest offering.
Where the previous films have centred around class warfare, political divides and racial tension, The
Forever Purge sets its sights on immigration, as a group of white nationalists hunt down Mexican immigrants near the border wall.
“The American political landscape inevitably seeps into everything I write,” says James DeMonaco, 51, the writer behind all five Purge films and director of the first three.
“The first Purge was written under the Obama administration; the new Purges have been written under the Trump administration.
“So, the discord that came up over the last couple of years specifically, really came to the forefront,” explains DeMonaco.
Describing the latest film as a “great dystopian horror action thriller”, he says the film has “now become a reflection of something else in the citizenry where there is a lot of anger.”
“There are many different parts of society that are feeling fed up and it boiled over, as we saw on January 6.
“People are not feeling served by their government,” says the producer, in reference to the US Capitol riots, which saw pro-Trump supporters storm the Capitol in Washington following January’s US election. The incident resulted in the five deaths.
“That anger – I can’t say that I intended the conceit to mirror the body politic at this present time,” says DeMonaco.
“I wrote this two years ago, but it’s really strange how it parallels it right now.
“It’s the strangest thing.” Blum reckons DeMonaco “sees into the future” when it comes to his scriptwriting.
“I don’t know how he does it,” declares the producer, “he’s done that a bunch of times.”
Centred around Mexican immigrant couple Juan (Tenoch Huerta) and Adela (Ana de la Reguera), the pair find themselves surviving their first national holiday in the “United States of hate” as the nation is referred to in the film.
Surprised at emerging unscathed from the night of bloodshed in a state already fraught with tension, the pair find themselves at the mercy of the breakaway militants.
“She wants to adapt to this country,” says Reguera, 44, of her character.
Describing Ana as embodying “the soul of a lot of people [who] come to this country”, Reguera, who herself has Mexican roots, says her character’s initial mission is simply to “be a hard worker and to have
a better future”.
“It’s not only like a Purge movie where we are going to go and be scared, it also sends a message.”
The Forever Purge also sees Josh Lucas step into the shoes of rancher Dylan Tucker, a character vocal about his distaste for undocumented immigrants.
“Josh was the embodiment of many conversations I heard and had with people about the current state of discord in the country, the current state of racism, income inequality, what people thought of that and why there’s such division and discord,” says DeMonaco. “I’ve heard [it] said numerous times, that cultural differences feed this kind of tribalism, discord and division.
“Is that really the reason? I don’t know. Is that an excuse?
“Is there something else brewing?” he asks.
Some people say “that we can’t bridge the cultural differences” he continues, “and I wanted this movie to be about [this] evolution into, ‘Well, maybe we can…’”
‘People are not feeling served by their government’
The Forever Purge is in cinemas now