THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR (2016) Movie Review

I was surprised I liked this film as much as I did.

This is a quick movie review of the film, The Purge: Election Year. Its a dystopian action horror film, written and directed by James DeMonaco (whose resume includes the other two Purge films, Assault on Precinct 13 & The Negotiator. He’ll be directing the next upcoming Purge film, The Island.) and stars Frank Grillo, Elizabeth Mitchell and Mykelti Williamson. This is a sequel to 2014’s The Purge: Anarchy and is the third installment in The Purge film franchise.

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The Purge films.

Let’s get something right out on the table now… this is a film of The Purge franchise, a fantasy world where in America, one night a year, criminal activity is allowed, even murder. The streets run rampant with people who are out to vent. They kill their spouses, their parents, their kids, their bosses with impunity.

The first two films set the stage for this world as we followed specific groups of people, and to some degree, we do the same here, but this third chapter has a much more involved story involving the government collusion behind the purge and the geopolitical results that come from the results of the purge, such as the purge being used as a political tool to give certain parties more power than others.

The story behind this chapter of The Purge is not a simple horror-action story, but rather, an engaging tale of victims, heroes and society taking back their world to rid themselves of The Purge.

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I was surprised that this was more than a simple horror flick and even though there was the standard violence associated with the first two chapters of this series, there was actually more story to it than just people running around to kill others and running to not get killed.

If you’ve liked The Purge films so far, this is the best of them, with more of a digestible story with some violence. Though if you check out the IMDb scores of the other two, it seems that your typical movie fans like the less complicated, simple story of the horrors of this violent world.

I’ve totally enjoyed Grillo’s participation in the series and Mitchell’s portrayal as a Senator dead set against The Purge, was actually quite believable. If you’re a fan of either of them or the series, I think you’ll enjoy this film.

The film got a 6/10 on IMDb. It's completely worthy of your time if it comes on TV or your pay channels.

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