The Purge (2013)

“Our target for this year’s purge is hiding in your home. You have one hour to find him and give him to us or we will kill all of you. We will be coming in.” – Polite Leader

Number of Times Seen – 1 (19 Jan 2014)

Brief Synopsis – A family safely secluded behind locked doors on “Purge” night find themselves in a precarious situation when a stranger seeking help bangs on their door.

My Take on it – I’m not a fan of horror movies and I’ve convinced myself that this movie is more of a thriller than horror, but any way you look at it, this movie has strong elements of both horror and suspense laden within.

I knew nothing about this movie prior to seeing it save the fact of what “Purge night” is.

I was pleasantly surprised at how good this movie was.

They present a situation that seems all too real and make us care about the Sandin family.  I for some reason didn’t recognize either Ethan Hawke or Lena Headey (who is a blonde in Game of Thrones and a brunette here) and I think that made the movie seem even more plausible in my eyes since I figured it was made with non-famous actors and it was done so well.  Due to this fact, I think the casting was done perfectly.

Another smart decision made by the filmmakers was keeping the movie relatively short.  Many thrillers these days draw out the suspense and action for much longer which causes lulls in the story which doesn’t happen here.

This movie was written very well by James DeMonaco who also wrote Jack (1996) and The Negotiator (1998).  I liked both of those movies a lot and am therefore not too surprised at how well this was written.

What makes this movie so powerful is that it seems like it’s something that could theoretically happen in the near future and that in and of itself scares the bejeebees out of me 😦

This movie has a moral conflict message that carries on throughout where characters are trying to decide what is the moral and humane thing to do.  It is something that I have actually continued to think about in the two days since I watched this.

When a movie gets me to constantly think about it, I know it has impacted me in a good way.

Bottom Line – Very interesting thriller that is done extremely well and in a somewhat realistic manner.  It’s scary how easily this scenario could possibly happen. Recommended!

Rating – Globe Worthy

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