The First Purge (15) Dir. Gerard McMurray

Welcome to the near future – where after the rise of a third political party, the New Founding Fathers of America, an experiment is conducted, no laws for 12 hours on Staten Island. No-one must stay during the experiment yet there is $5,000 for anyone who does… This is the prequel to the Purge series which all have the same basic premise – showing us the violent delights that might occur when all crime – even murder - is legal for a night. As a sociological experiment allowing communities to vent their aggression, and those who feel marginalised to literally rage against the machine – there is lots that could be probed here. Alas this purge is a cliché-em-up that takes a mediocre bunch of actors and gives them awful dialogue, weak motivations and stupid actions – and it ends up adding nothing to the franchise except perhaps the thought that they really should stop making them… The only characters you might care about are a stoic anti-purge activist Nya (Lex Scott Davis) and her young brother, Isaiah (Joivan Wade). Everyone else are either cannon fodder, over the top nutty ‘purgers’ or the least convincing ‘hero’ ever in drug kingpin with a heart Dmitri (Y’lan Noel). Worst of the bunch though is a nutter called Skeletor (Rotimi Paul) – not the He Man one – who is a nasty, unhinged junkie who exists to be really really evil, unfortunately he’s just not very scary. Sure, there’s some attempts at gritty violence and dystopian social political commentary but it’s all recycled from the other Purge films, and it’s frankly just not as good. Director Gerard McMurray delivers a ham-fisted attempt at horror, relying on paper thin jump-scares and a total lack of tension. He also breaks the unspoken but obvious prequel rule – introducing better and more effective tech which somehow disappears in all the supposed follow on films!? Overall the moral of the film seems to be that only more violence is the solution to any problem. Alas, in the world we live in, this message is likely to be lapped up – we just have to pray Trump doesn’t watch this film and think it’s a proposal for him to put it into action. The weakest Purge yet. If you go see this – you’ll want to purge it from your memory.