THE FIRST PURGE: Killing Sanctioned Amid Trump Politics

For James DeMonaco – creator and director of the first three installments of the series, this time only the screenwriter – The First Purge was a return to the past, while for us it may be a glimpse of the future… or at least that’s how, in a clumsy and painfully banal way, the creators of the prequel try to scare the audience.

I can appreciate weaving socio-political themes into an entertainment film. The pro-ecological message of the first Godzilla, the anti-government Death Race 2000, or the anti-war overtones of Plan 9 from Outer Space, in my opinion, hit harder than pompous arthouse cinema, which is essentially just preaching to the converted.

Viewers of films like The Post sit down in front of the screen expecting confirmation of their beliefs—and usually that’s exactly what they get. A movie about aliens or vampires, on the other hand, can spend over an hour simply entertaining before unexpectedly dropping a not-too-subtle but, thanks to surprise, powerful message that war is bad. Since its inception in 2013, The Purge has shown the same tendencies, yet has never managed to find the right balance. The First Purge is no exception. It was meant to draw viewers in with the promise of ruthless brutality stemming from a few hours of suspended law and order, but the whole idea of the spectacle was also supposed to provoke reflection. Unfortunately, neither of these elements works as it should.

The first part fails mainly because of a half-hour of boredom at the beginning. This installment was supposed to reveal how the ruling party came to power, why society accepted the idea of legalized killing, and in what way it was supposed to benefit (a concept strikingly similar to Thanos’ philosophy in Avengers: Infinity War). Extra exposition was to be expected, but it brought nothing new—most of this information we already had. So what happens in the meantime? Of course, there has to be a romantic subplot to heighten the threat of death hanging over the protagonists.

Nya is a local activist reminiscent of the “angry law student” meme who can’t go fifteen minutes without mentioning his alma mater. The character played by Lex Scott Davis (“lex” meaning “law” in Latin—coincidence?) suffers from a similar compulsion: she constantly has to assert her strength, push her way through, give orders, raise her voice—often completely out of proportion to the situation. Dmitri isn’t Russian; he’s the stereotypical blaxploitation pimp with a heart of gold, except he deals drugs. Nya and Dmitri are no longer together, but their old flame hasn’t gone cold, and the crisis rekindles their passion. So much so that by the end of the second act, Dmitri transforms into an ’80s-style action hero, a muscleman in the vein of Schwarzenegger or Stallone. Effortlessly, and with Blade-like flair, he swings a machine gun and mows down highly trained mercenaries, who explode into showers of cheap, digital blood.

The finale is full-on action cinema, and for once it works fairly well—in the staircase sequence, when Dmitri finally has to put in some effort to defeat his enemies. The shaky, narrow framing still manages to capture the emotion, though it’s a pity the whole scene wasn’t done in a single take. The strangest thing, however, is that before the drug dealer turned into John Rambo, the director had been serving up a horror atmosphere. Almost every appearance of the psychotic villain Skeletor—whose name and behavior are equally cartoonish—was accompanied by cheap jump scares, completely out of place with what was happening on screen.

Everything seemed to suggest his head would have to roll in the finale as a symbol of good triumphing over evil, but the sudden shift in tone makes the scariest horror element the Halloween sequel poster hanging in Nya’s apartment (both films share the same producer).

The political thread is somewhat more interesting, heavily inspired by Donald Trump’s presidency but easily translatable into parallel situations in other countries (and I use the word “parallel” deliberately). The driving force behind the first purge turns out to be economic inequality. The wealthy minority wants to get rid of the poor majority, luring them with a $5,000 stipend.

To earn the money, one doesn’t even need to kill—just remain in the designated zone until the end of the experiment. Unsurprisingly, there’s no shortage of volunteers. The most striking moment, however, is the assault on Nya, during which the defiant activist is grabbed between the legs, fights off her attacker, and with contempt calls him a “pussy grabber”—a clear reference to Donald Trump’s infamous words: “Grab her by the pussy.”

These are interesting touches, but from a broader perspective the political intrigue here resembles Dr. Evil’s schemes (Austin Powers’ nemesis) rather than a plot worthy of Frank Underwood. It reeks of banality and tackiness, which is a shame, because on paper the premise is closer to Jack Womack’s Random Acts of Senseless Violence (which we’ll probably never see adapted). After four films, it’s hard to believe the series will ever truly rise to that level of storytelling, perfectly balancing social tension, the growing wave of normalized violence, and the fate of an individual unwilling to become part of the new world order.

Perhaps if The First Purge had been released in the 1980s on VHS tapes, today it would enjoy cult status and be compared to Walter Hill’s The Warriors. In 2018, however, it was merely an average film—one that can be watched without feeling like you’ve wasted your time and that doesn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence like The Hurricane Heist or Pacific Rim: Uprising, but from which, unfortunately, nothing more can be expected.