THE FIRST PURGE

The fourth entry in this increasingly political horror franchise rewinds to, well, the first purge, when presiding party The New Founding Fathers Of America opt to make Staten Island the test site for a 12-hour period where all crime becomes legal.

Will the release of all of that pent-up socio-economic and racial rage reduce crime rates for the other 364 days of the year? If not, muses the nationalist, ultra-religious NFFA, it will at least delete a bunch of undesirables given that Staten Island is predominately a black, low-income area.

It is, as ever, a sharp idea, and the on-the-nose dialogue and imagery (like a gang dishing out death dressed in KKK hoods) can be excused given that subtlety has no place under Trump’s reign. But the violence that takes place across the Purge movies is never as savage as the central concept, dulling the exploitation edge, and even worse is the extended finale’s fetishised gunplay. In a film that levels its sights at the NRA-funded NFFA (aka the Republicans now in office), why send the message that the best way to fight back is with all guns blazing?

Extras Three blink-andyou’ll-miss-’em promotional featurettes (seven minutes); a deleted scene which gives bloodthirsty killer Skeletor a jump scare and a new ending. Jamie Graham