The Forever Purge
Rating: 2.5/5
By: Nathaniel Simpson
The Purge series has been a staple of horror for Blumhouse for almost ten years when The Forever Purge was released. They had crafted this series of films, ranging from some pretty good entries in the series to those that simply feel like cash grabs more than anything. However, it seems like no matter what Blumhouse releases for The Purge, audiences will show up for this next gory story they have to tell. With The Forever Purge, which is seemingly the final entry into this long-running series of films, it seems like they are taking a big swing with this story and hoping audiences will enjoy what they were able to conjure up. However, I wonder if they simply bit off more than they can chew with this one, making a very uneven film that is great at times, but simply a bore at others.
After the events of The Purge: Election Year, with the Purge being banned, it made millions of Americans start to miss the annual event where all crime is legal for twelve-hours. Therefore, when the New Founding Fathers of America are able to get back into office, they bring back the Purge, which splits America on how they feel about this annual event coming back. The latest Purge comes and goes, and the Americans who were scared of the Purge coming back can now breathe a sigh of relief. That is until huge groups of citizens decide they don't want to wait every year and want to commit whatever crime they want all year-round, bringing forward the Forever Purge.
At its core, I think this is a really interesting premise. I always had wondered what is stopping people from just overthrowing power and control and continue the Purge forever, and this movie answered that question for me. I think the concept of the Purge itself was destined to fail in the constraints of this film, and this movie shows what would happen if America did turn to having an annual event like this. One thing I will say about these movies is that they are always able to conjure up a new problem or plot for their films, even if it doesn't succeed. I don't know how I feel about James DeMonaco as a writer, but there is no doubt in my mind that he doesn't have some great ideas.
With that being said, director Everardo Valerio Gout takes the script that DeMonaco wrote and tries his best to adapt it to the screen. There are definitely some inspired moments in this movie; one that stands out to me is the terrifying trap that Adela (Ana de la Reguera) finds herself in when the Purge is supposed to be over the next morning. I think that whole scene in general is just done really well. But, when we are not getting moments like this, the rest of the story is very bland and generic, with our characters being incredibly boring and the story feeling very straightforward.
It's hard to take really uninteresting characters and place them in a movie that relies on the viewer caring about what happens to them. I think The Purge films have always been able to make their characters feel relatable or somewhat likable, and this movie simply just drops the ball. It feels like DeMonaco rather relied on racial stereotypes to get us to care about these characters and what they are going through rather than having to craft these thematically rich and interesting characters.
With that being said however, I think the cast does their best at trying to breathe some sort of life into this movie. Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, Josh Lucas, Will Patton, and co. are all good actors, and there is nothing offensive they do here in this movie. They are truly given the impossible task of trying to get the viewer to care about these characters when they aren't written as so, so we can't blame the actors for this at all. I simply applaud them for trying to bring something to life that maybe shouldn't have been.
The Forever Purge is for sure not the worst entry into this series, but there is simply no rhyme or reason for it. There are aspects I did like sprinkled throughout the film, but it simply can't save itself with its incredibly bland characters and even more boring plot. It's a shame that this is what the franchise might be leaving off on, but it's not surprising in the slightest.
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