The First Purge

The Gist: Amid rampant social unrest brought about by income inequality and widespread dissatisfaction, a new political party, the NFFA (New Founding Fathers of America) conquers power. Their plan to improve society is a dry-run of some academic's experimental idea in the New York neighborhood of Staten Island: suspend all laws for a period of 12 hours to allow citizens to release their inhibitions. The reasoning is that by being temporarily allowed to purge one's rage in a "controlled" fashion, self-control will prevail the rest of the year and generally improve behavior, outlook, and society at large.

After three fairly successful installments in the franchise (one, two, three), an origin story showing how we got here seems warranted. The First Purge wisely, if only slightly, tones down the firepower sophistication, likely due to this happening earlier in the timeline and it being the first time out for purgers. But fret not! Scares and tension abound!

What the movie unfortunately lacks is really interesting characters. My guess is that they tried to set up too many angles, with each requiring its own set of characters, which overloaded the plot. Needing a fair amount of action, scares, setups and explanations and what not, everything ends up being a bit too rushed and contrived.

The Bottom Line: I think showing how the purge originated (and degenerated) was smart and likely enough for fans of the franchise. However, the audience by now knows what to expect, and The First Purge offers little in terms of new and compelling reasons to add new chapters in the future. Still, it makes for a few more good scares.

Grade: 5