Review – The Purge

The premise has a certain “Festival! Landru commands it!” appeal. But that’s where it ends. The story turns out to be a witless tale of a family trapped in their upper middle class house, besieged by psychos out for blood during The Purge, the one night a year when no laws are enforced. The writing is weak, particularly plagued by the novice tendency to employ too many characters and then park them in limbo-like holding patterns when they aren’t on screen (a sure symptom that the writer regards characters as plot devices rather than people). And the visual quality is even worse, serving up more than half the picture in jerky fits and starts lit only by jittery flashlights. There’s some heavy-handed social commentary buried somewhere in the technical faults, but such an annoying production renders its message impossible to care about. See if desperate