The Purge: My Reluctant And Unexpected Enjoyment

Right from the get go I was dubious about The Purge. It sounds completely unrealistic and even downright stupid: In the near future society is kept in line by allowing one night a year where nothing is a crime and people can descend into Battle Royale without consequence. It's a pretty shaky premise for what is basically a home invasion thriller, and even while I found myself reluctantly liking the movie, in the back of my head I couldn't shut off the torrent of "That's stupid! Why would that be happening!?". With the all too common chorus of "You're stupid! Why are you doing that!?" in the forefront of my head, it's a wonder I liked the movie at all.

Let's get this straight, it's a dumb premise. Not only is allowing a night of unbridled crime not going to stop anything, how would it ever be enforced? What's stopping people from just committing crimes all the time like they do anyways? Wouldn't people just hold year long grudges against their neighbor that they know is a murderer on one night a year, sowing even more distrust and paranoia? Why doesn't a security salesman in a future that allows murder to be legal have a secret unpenetrable panic room in his house instead of just sheet metal on the doors and windows? The answer to pretty much all of these questions can be summed up with: weak political commentary. Normally this is a major turnoff in a horror movie for me, but it was sort of so outlandish that I found myself enjoying it.

I like being scared by the idea of a strange and scary theocratic super government (this movie actually vaguely reminded me of Nine Inch Nail's concept album Year Zero), government sanctioned death sports, polite school uniform clad psycho murderers, and getting so frustrated with the stupidity of horror movie victims that I want to reach into my TV and slap some sense into them. To top it off, it's not too difficult to make a home invasion horror scary, as silly as the pretense might be. Even while half my brain was reminding me how dumb this movie was, the other half was yelling "Look out behind you! He has an ax!".

The Purge wasn't a great movie, but it was definitely a guilty pleasure to watch and had some fun home invasion related scares. I might not recommend it to everyone, but I definitely wouldn't recommend that you avoid it.