The first Purge film was a largely unexceptional instance of that most bourgeois of movie genres: the home-invasion thriller. Starring Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey as a white suburban couple with two children and a house big enough for killers to hide themselves in, the 2013 horror film asked viewers to identify with the foursome indoors while the Purge, a 12-hour suspension of the rule of law, came knocking bloodily at their door. The hit franchise, which is releasing its fourth installment on the July 4th and will expand into a 10-episode limited TV series this fall, began with a small subversion of its siege-mentality subgenre: Hawke’s paterfamilias is ultimately punished for enriching himself by selling subpar home-security systems, demand for which skyrocketed after the Purge’s arrival. (He, the profiteer, is the only member of his family who dies.) Since then, the Purge films have gotten increasingly and more explicitly political about race and class, culminating with the openly didactic social critiques of the new, confusingly titled The First Purge. By exposing on the top-down class-warfare origins of the annual event, the prequel elaborates on the series’ earnest political commentary—and exposes its limits as well.
from Stories from Slate https://ift.tt/2u2Tait
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