Mayhem

The Purge: Anarchy is a B-horror/action movie sequel that looks glossy for its genre. It's a $9 million production -- three times the cost of the original -- doubtless spent because the first film unexpectedly made a lot of money. With the additional outlay, and twenty minutes more of runtime, down the tubes went the weirdness and narrative economy cheap B-horror/action movies can achieve sometimes when all goes well. Money didn't go on better actors -- Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey dropped out and Frank Grillo and some unknowns came in -- or on good writing. James DeMonaco directed and wrote again, as he did Purge number one. He put his energy into the action sequences, and the weaponry, of which there's plenty. Firearms enthusiasts may have a lot to talk about; regular viewers, not so much, unless they want to discuss the insoluble question: What the hell is going on here?

The "Purge" premise makes no sense and neither does the movie as a whole. Motivations of the villains, and of most actions, other than running away from people with guns, are so confusing it makes you wish we could just have zombies back. What made me uncomfortable watching The Purge: Anarchy wasn't the pretty routine danger its main characters get into but my inability to make sense out of the premise. The "Purge" is a once-a-year night when all crimes go unpunished, nationwide, in a 2023 right-wing America whose rulers are known as "The New Founding Fathers." This is the sixth year of the Purge, we're told. But why? And what actually happens? DeMonaco throws out half a dozen possibilities, whatever will seem to motivate the next scene.

Naturally you'd think the population was supposed to be purging something, presumably its violent and criminal urges. But that doesn't bear much examination as an idea, and it's not examined. The dialogue is very lame, involving a lot of "Are you okays?" and "Be safes". Nobody is okay and nobody is safe. Not even the very rich, who seem to use this night as a time to enjoy killing people. But are all rich people really that evil now? And if their conservative "New Founding Fathers" government rules, why would it encourage mayhem at any time?

So we just get the nameless sergeant (Frank Grillo), out to avenge the drunk driver who killed his son and got off on a technicality. He becomes the protector of a little quartet, a bickering couple menaced by a terrifying gang after their car breaks down (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) and an African-American mother and daughter (Carmen Ejogo and Zoë Soul) who flee when their apartment is invaded by an evil army. And they run around, experiencing a violent scene in a friend's house, till they're all rounded up to be killed for sport by the rich.

In their way zombie movies make sense, and leave room for devastating ironies, as in Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead -- and even for love, as seen recently in Jonathan Levine's Warm Bodies. Some critics have said this movie "takes the germ of an interesting social science idea and lets it rot." I'm sorry, but what interesting social science idea would that be? It's because Purge: Anarchy's story logic is so garbled, vapid and uninteresting that it fails even in its glossy version of a B-horror movie.

We get let down on the "purging" action because while rape is hinted as a possibility, and robbery would seem an inevitability, killing is all we see. Reportedly in the first film, also by Mr. DeMonaco, the focus is on the house of rich white people invaded by free-ranging felons, but this time he chooses to spend most of his time out in the streets. A lot of the action, though, would work better in a crime or war movie where it would have a discernible context.

The Purge: Anarchy hints several times that The Purge is a scheme to wipe out the poor. Really? Do the rich want to get rid of the poor? Don't they, at worst, prefer to ignore them? Sometimes the poor are useful. The film reports that unemployment and crime are way down now, in the sixth year of The Purge. That's funny, especially the notion that a super-crime night would lessen the crime rate: one would think it might whet the appetite for it.

Ideas are fatally underdeveloped in this movie, but so is character. The actors, particularly Ejogo and Soul, have some warmth. Grillo's character slowly unbends, but he spends too much time being enigmatic and macho for much humanity to come out. There is also a militant black anti-Purge movement with a fiery bespectacled leader Carmelo (Michael K. Williams). But everybody is predictable.

The Purge: Anarchy is a mash-up of Warriors and Escape from New York atmosphere with unsatisfying hints of a less convincing Orwellian Hunger Games world. There is some rather nice dark imagery of Los Angeles streets by dp Jacques Jouffret, but in intimate scenes the emphasis on shallow focus extreme closeup is distracting. DeMonaco gives us some surprising tableaux, but doesn't use them to full advantage. The wild youths wearing ghoul masks are stunning -- the one hint of (scary) humor -- but Harmony Korine did it better for nothing in Trash Humpers. Visually what's best is the graphic design, seen in the giant-font closing credits and the setup of Carmelo's online propagandizing. There are moments when you might think this is going to be a memorable B Picture after all, but they pass. Zombies keep things simple. Low budgets keep the focus on what matters. Good writing, which also means knowing what story you are telling and having one that makes sense, is essential at any cost.

The Purge: Anarchy, 103 mins., opened 18 July 2014 in the US and other countries, 23 July in France, 25 July in the UK.

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.