The Forever Purge – Film Review

Adela (Ana de la Reguera, Cowboys & Aliens) and her husband Juan (Tenoch Huerta, Days of Grace) live in Texas, where Juan is working as a ranch hand for the wealthy Tucker family. Juan impresses the Tucker patriarch, Caleb (Will Patton, Halloween), but that fuels the jealous anger of Caleb’s son, Dylan (Josh Lucas, Ford v Ferrari). On the morning after The Purge, a masked gang of killers attacks the Tucker family–including Dylan’s wife (Cassidy Freeman, HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones), and his sister (Leven Rambin, The Hunger Games), forcing both families to band together and fight back as the country spirals into chaos and the United States begins to disintegrate around them.

Back when I was in the eighth grade, my best friend and I almost always went to the local theatre together to see the newest films that sparked our interest. We practically counted down the days until the weekend so we could see these new films and usually, we got excited about horror movies more than anything else.

To this day, I vividly remember when I first saw the poster and trailer for James DeMonaco‘s The Purge and thinking it looked like the coolest movie I had ever seen. Strangely enough, my friend and I never ended up seeing it together in theatres but I did watch it when it was released on Blu-ray and I found myself being majorly disappointed.

The concept immediately struck me as absolutely incredible – the kind of concept that makes you wonder “How has that not been done already?” – For one night every single year, all crime, including murder, is legal for a twelve-hour time period. It’s the kind of wacky, insane concept that would make any horror and action movie fan salivate.

The potential for sheer chaos and disturbing content is almost literally off the charts and yet for whatever reason, that first Purge film decided to keep the story contained with one family in one house and it didn’t feature much killing or destruction. What gives?

Thankfully, the cries of the critics and audiences were heard as we later got Anarchy (which is one of my favorites to this day) and Election Year, two sequels that took the action outside and showed us just how deadly some people would take this annual night of Purging.

We later got a prequel movie depicting the first-ever Purge called… The First Purge. Not only is the title extremely confusing, but it ended up being a bland disappointment that didn’t really offer up any insight whatsoever into the roots of the Purge. I wanted a movie where we actually saw how the New Founding Fathers of America came up with the idea to sanction the Purge but instead, we got a film where we saw yet another group of people killing each other. How original.

Although I usually end up disappointed with The Purge movies, for whatever reason, I actually found myself getting quite excited to see The Forever Purge directed by Everardo Valerio Gout, which is said to be the final installment in the franchise. If this is indeed the last one, then I have to say that they certainly went out with a bang. Not only is The Forever Purge easily the best in the franchise, but it’s a legitimately disturbing movie that asks timely questions and depicts an America that is in such distress and chaos, but here’s the kicker – it doesn’t feel far-fetched. It feels scarily plausible.

One of the biggest problems I had with the previous Purge films was that they never genuinely made me feel disturbed or uneasy. This is not good. These are movies that depict one night in America where everybody can commit any crime they can dream up during a twelve-hour time span.

Despite Anarchy and Election Year doing their best to depict the violence that may ensue on a night like this, they still felt like they were holding something back. It felt like the killing was shown on-screen because the filmmakers were thinking “Hey, isn’t this cool? Look at how much killing and blood we have in our movie!”.

But The Forever Purge is the first (and I guess only) film in the series that doesn’t depict its extreme violence as being fun and entertaining. As a matter of fact, whenever people were getting killed in various different gruesome ways, I found myself wincing and not wanting to look at the screen – a feeling I have never gotten while watching a Purge movie in the past.

Courtesy of Universal Pictures

The reason why I was wincing and feeling deeply disturbed? Because the violence here and the way America is depicted feels scarily plausible. I could genuinely see some of the events that happen in this film happening in real-life one day, although in somewhat of a different fashion. There is never going to be a real-life Purge night, but some of the scenes throughout the film I feel could actually happen. And that’s terrifying.

In every single Purge film to date, they always depict America as a place with hope and they introduced the Purge as a way for Americans to cleanse their souls of hate and anger one night a year in an effort to dramatically decrease the levels of crime and corruption. Obviously, this is not a good idea because people are absolutely going to take advantage of a situation like this but the NFFA doesn’t realize this.

They understand just how brutal things usually get on Purge Night, but they don’t really care. To them, as long as crime rates go down even one percent, they’re the good guys and they did the right thing. America is always depicted with hope and prosperity in these movies but The Forever Purge is the only time the franchise has quite literally given up on America.

Without getting into any spoilers, The Forever Purge has been billed as a movie in which American citizens continue to kill people throughout the country even after the annual Purge Night concludes. They simply don’t care about the laws anymore. They want to kill people and they are not going to let a siren stop them from following through with this.

As each minute ticks by in the film, we see America getting more and more unhinged. The country plummets into the deepest, darkest place you could ever imagine. But what’s so terrifying is like I said earlier – it feels real and it seems like something that could happen in real life in some capacity.

Something that The Forever Purge did that I absolutely loved is that it finally depicts what I mentioned above – people killing and committing crimes even after the annual Purge Night is over. While watching the other films in the franchise, the thought always crossed my mind – “Who’s to say that just because the Purge is officially over, that people wouldn’t just continue killing others anyway?”.

However, each entry ends with a little bow and ribbon because as soon as Purge Night is over, the country goes back to their day-to-day lives with no care in the world. However, The Forever Purge finally depicts this exact scenario and it does a really good job of doing so.

Don’t get me wrong, this film is not perfect in any way. Some of the problems I have with the other installments in the series carry on over here. For example, it seems like every one of these films suffers from terrible dialogue, and this one is sadly, no exception. DeMonaco’s writing has improved significantly this time around, but when it comes to the dialogue side of things, it’s still quite iffy.

Plus, the first thirty minutes of the film are straight-up boring. It’s a string of scenes that set up the last ever Purge night happening and therefore, not a whole lot of intrigue happens until the Purging finally begins. That, and some of the actors are a little stiff in their roles (namely Will Brittain and Josh Lucas).

But all issues aside, The Forever Purge seriously took me by surprise. I’m glad this franchise decided to make their final movie the one that absolutely doesn’t care anymore and just goes all out with its insanity. It’s the most outlandishly brutal Purge yet, and it’s also the most realistic.

The magic of The Purge movies is watching them and knowing they’re not real – they’re a work of fiction – but while you watch them, having the thought in your head of “Surely none of this could ever happen, right? Right?…”. Well, The Forever Purge makes a compelling case that maybe, just maybe, some of it could.