REVIEW - THE PURGE

Home invasion movies are supposedly scary because they prey upon our fear that what we regard as our shelter and our private world can be the most dangerous place in the whole world. It's the relatability that spooks us - the fear remains with us even when we arrive home, as we start checking behind doors and under beds and inside closets. The Purge's central nice white affluent family live in an American suburban alcazar, it seems, with more rooms than Buckingham Palace and more corridors and staircases than hairs on your head, but that's not where it's missing that crucial relatability. No, that's missing in the basic concept, which you will discover if you google the film so I won't need to describe the depth of its inanity here. It's such a damn stupid idea that the script can't help but trip over it once every few minutes, firing another synapse in your brain reminding you of just how implausible it is. And I'll forever fail to understand why films such as this, which depend altogether on a clear sense of spacial awareness, sheathe their labyrinthine sets in shadow and thrust their shaky-cams half-way down the actors' throats. Ethan Hawke plays the ignorant, sexist (the filmmakers don't know he's sexist, but I do, and you will), indecisive, irrational patriarch whom you'll probably want to meet some sad demise, and Lena Headey provides the film's best moments when she has a tantrum near the end then clouts some smug bitch in the face. The sickeningly self-satisfied bad guy is played by Rhys Wakefield, whose performance is so infuriatingly bad that you may wish this film's concept were a reality and you had his home address. He's not helped by atrocious dialogue, granted; you know when an actor's so good you say you could listen to them read the phonebook? He'll make you wish you could listen to him read the phonebook instead. Writer-director James DeMonaco probably thinks he's a real smart cookie raising questions like 'Does one respect the law or respect one's personal moral code?', but he neglects to develop these to any extent. This is a bland, thankfully forgettable piece of weapons porn, with political pretensions that it doesn't even understand.