Eighth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #4 The Purge

The way this country is going, I thought it behooved me to watch a Purge movie or two, you know, for research, just in case.  I like to start at the beginning so I cued up the first one, which seems like it has been out forever but really just came out in 2013.  Filmed for only $3 million (!) and starring actual actors (!!) Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey, The Purge is really more thriller than horror but does offer some social commentary.

In a dystopian near-future, the U.S. has "solved" its crime problem: one night a year, "Purge Night," any crime is allowed with no repercussions.  People get all that violence out of their systems during those twelve hours, thus behaving themselves for the rest of the year.  Of course, the wealthy are able to barricade themselves inside fortified houses, leaving the nation's poor to bear the brunt of the beatings and bloody murder.  Hawke and Headey are one such wealthy couple - Hawke sells Purge Night security systems - whose night does not go as planned when (a) their sulky teenaged daughter's sulky boyfriend, who has snuck into their house before lockdown, brings a gun to convince Hawke to let him date the sulky daughter and (b) their angsty/geeky son opens the barricade to provide sanctuary to a homeless vet.  Their house becomes beseiged by a group of mask-wearing entitled rich kids who are pissed off that their quarry (the homeless vet) has been taken from them and, as it turns out, Hawke's vaunted security system is a whole lot less secure than they might have hoped.

Hawke and Headey do a good job with what they're given but the teen actors are boring stereotypes at best.  The homeless vet is barely onscreen enough to become a character; the masked Purgers provide some over-the-top menace.  It's violent but not particularly gruesome or scary - from what I hear, the later movies kick it up a notch.  I guess I'll find out.