Most of writer/director James DeMonaco’s career has been his efforts with the Purge franchise, so each new entry into the canon shows the helmer finding more ways to further the original film’s brilliant premise. A future America celebrating an annual holiday wherein all crime is legal for twelve hours is the kind of idea grindhouse screenwriters in the ‘70s would salivate over. The first outing had potential, but squandered that delicious genre logline on a straightforward horror flick with minor touches hinting at something more special. The Purge: Anarchy exploded the world open wider with more diverse points of view and a less claustrophobic exploration of the mythology, but it left so many lingering questions about the intricacies of Purge culture.
The Purge: Election Year also leaves a lot on the table, but it’s not for lack of trying. The latest chapter in this saga doubles down on the shock, violence and dread that characterized the last two releases, but dials up the absurdity in equal measure with prescient social commentary. Our nation seems to be careening towards a Wrestlemania main event for the fate of our patriotic souls IRL, so naturally, Elizabeth Mitchell’s Senator Charlie Roan running for President on an optimistic platform feels ripped from the headlines. But let’s be honest. Sociopolitical subtlety has never been this franchise’s strong point, and Election Year does little to change that.
DeMonaco doles out heaping helpings of explanation for the New Founding Fathers who birthed this status quo and the larger classism underlying the act of Purging, but, really, it’s an excuse for Frank Grillo to run around stabbing and shooting people like he did for his Frank Castle cover band routine in Anarchy. The driving throughline of Grillo’s Leo Barnes trying to keep Senator Roan safe gives the film a sense of purpose and a strong pace. In terms of reflective silence to jump scare ‘splosion balance, this is a film Joel Silver would have no qualms with. To keep things from being just another save the princess narrative, the side characters drawn into this mess from the periphery are delightfully diverse.
There’s Joe Dixon, the comic relief deli owner character that gives Mykelti Williamson an opportunity to be a much funnier, less sexist Steve Harvey stand-in. He’s joined by Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria), Joe’s protege who grew up in Juarez, where “every day is like The Purge.” The real standout, though, is Laney Rucker (Betty Gabriel), an ex-gang banger reformed as the Purge equivalent of an ambulance driver. She’s like Pam Grier playing Casey Jones and easily voted Most Likely To Lead The Franchise in a perfect world. Between their narratives, DeMonaco is able to squeeze in a variety of new Purge wrinkles, giving a multidimensionality to the world there just wasn’t room for before.
This is the first Purge film that feels fully realized. The Purge is such a transgressive cultural pipe bomb, sending ripples out from the holiday itself to the society that has grown around it. Any nerd who couldn’t stop asking hypothetical world building questions after the credits of the first two films will be satisfied with much of Election Year’s charming ephemera. From the concept of Purge insurance (where companies jack up the rates right before the fateful night, rendering poor policy holders defenseless) to underground triage centers for victims of purging, there’s more than enough to whet the average Purge obsessionist’s thirst for knowledge while fomenting further speculation as to the intricacies of this universe. That’s not even mentioning the Murder Tourists, groups of euro trash visiting the states just for the opportunity to “live as the Americans do. They dress up like Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty and slash and stab while proclaiming their undying love for this great nation.
In that regard, The Purge films have now come close to surpassing the Fast & Furious series as the quintessential American film franchise. The action’s macabre brutality intersects with a newfound sense of humor to feel so distinctly U-S-A that it’s hard to imagine any other ongoing movie narrative coming close to capturing the thrilling tragicomedy that’s become American life. Election Year blends the nihilistic punk spirit of Death Wish 3 and a gaudy variation of the post-Spring Breakers aesthetic with the sort of 101 class social commentary we’ve come to settle for since Fight Club. It’s a darkly comic rumination on urbanity wrapped up in a glamorous cinematic Turducken of exploitation tropes.
But there’s still room for growth. The film’s decidedly milquetoast primary antagonists fail to meet, much less surpass the haunting villainy Rhys Wakefield’s “Polite Leader” evoked in the first film, settling instead for the stock turpitude of rich white men in suits. There’s an insane sequence with a horde of teenage girls who’ve prepared for Purge Night like some sort of twisted slaughter prom, arriving in a car covered in last year’s christmas lights. There’s more restless invention in that one scene than the entirety of the film’s third act, proving that DeMonaco is still learning the right way to play in his own wildly successful sandbox.
Maybe the solution is to let another helmer take a crack at the next one. Yeah, Election Year has what could be described as a happy ending, but there’s going to be another Purge after this. Hopefully several. In a world where everything gets a sequel or a shared universe, this might be the one franchise actually worthy of any television spin-off, comic book tie-in or MMORPG you could wring from it. We still have yet to reach Peak Purge, but this ludicrous monument to America’s torturous love affair with violence will certainly suffice while we wait for that eventual masterpiece.
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