Pillow Talking’s Review of THE PURGE

Someday Productions LLC and Pillow Talking are pleased to present the following review of  THE PURGE by I.M. Nosferatu

The Purge

by I.M. Nosferatu

GLOSSARY:

Jasonian – Friday the 13th classic quality level

Sick – Good

Ripper smooth – Smooth like the blade of Jack the Ripper

Horrific – Excellent

Horrifically – Really

Fangs — Kudos

Bite – Shout out

Hitch – Hitchcock

Krugerian level – The level of A Nightmare on Elm Street

Shark attack – blood and guts spewing all over like a major feeding

Red – blood

Fever pitch – love of killing

I.M. Nosferatu Medal of Honor – my prestigious thump on the back for a great film!

The Purge: Social Science Fiction/Action/Horror

With the July 1, 2016 release of The Purge: Election Year, written and directed by James DeMonaco, it seems appropriate to go back and give you a piece of my mind with regard to his first – and soon second – installments, 2013’s The Purge and 2014’s The Purge: Anarchy. Let’s start at the beginning…

Genocide, blood sport, social satire, creepy, half-burnt remote-control dolls named Timmy who charmingly play 1920s music (would have been my kinda toy when I was a young-un), and a sadistic but oh-so charismatic and well-dressed man who smiles as wide as the Cheshire Cat while he stonily blows the brains out of his BFF without a single drop of blood spatter on his Brooks Brothers. Makes for an incredible 85 minutes of entertainment, don’cha think?

What I wouldn’t give for a good purge. I mean, really, who couldn’t do with a no-holds-barred, do-whatever-the-hell-you-want, grade-A melee? A dream come true, right? I eat, sleep, and breathe this kind of thing. Ordinarily all those HORRIFIC movie badasses (my heroes) are being persecuted for their morbid, killer lust – but not here. I tell you, we need to live in a kind of world (if only in my fantasies) that gives us all carte blanche to go into full-on SHARK ATTACK-mode with no repercussions. What I could do with a few hatchets or machetes or a sweet looking Mossberg 590 Chainsaw and a Heckler & Koch MP5K. Or give me an Intratec TEC-DC9 and a Beretta 92FS Inox. How about a Desert Eagle Mark XIX or a Kimber Warrior? There are so many breathtakingly beautiful firearms in this flick, I’m about to come unglued! Hoplophobics need not come along for this ride.

Whoever thought of the SICK premise for this insane profile of depraved, violent politics (under the guise of personal catharsis and keeping unemployment and crime down) deserves the I.M. NOSFERATU MEDAL OF HONOR – a prestigious thump on the back given by yours truly for stating what we all know – we are an aggressive species whose politically correct, disgustingly saccharin, If you don’t have anything nice to say [or do] don’t say [or do] anything at all attitude just plain sucks. You can’t tell me every one of us isn’t just trigger-finger itchin’ to get out our juicy, pent-up frustrations on those who deserve it – and who doesn’t love a whole lotta RED? Could you have guessed it’s my favorite color?

This KRUGERIAN LEVEL frenzy takes it up a notch. You’ve got your tight-ass Sandin family with too much money and too much fakey-fake, let’s-have-a-family-dinner-with-the-kids-who-don’t-give-a-crap-about-us dialogue while we pretend the entire lower class (or your putrid boss) isn’t about to be exterminated. They’re surrounded by an uber-upper class community full of can’t-put-your-finger-on-it but oddly disturbing Stepford neighbors whom you just know are pumped up with too much Botox and too many dirty martinis – they’re flashing that $50,000 veneered smile at you while they give you Rohypnol-laced cookies and plot your demise. For twelve hours, just after you eat that last morsel of mom’s oh-so-good, gourmet and carb-free dinner (that she cooked in a skirt and heels), it’s time to lock down the house panic room-style because the annual purge is about to begin – a government condoned (and encouraged), kill-who-you-want spree of glee. Time to take out the social waste – the homeless, the lower class, the food stamp-totin’, welfare check-collectin’ leeches of our good world. Thank you oh, great god Darwin – we’ll just step in and help along that mechanism of “survival of the fittest” where nature hasn’t done its proper job of selecting for us. Awesome night for a game of Scrabble, eh?

Uninterested in participating in the lawlessness (what’s wrong with them?), the Sandins are just gonna stay barricaded and watch the festivities on the TV. Freaky boy son, Charlie (a perfectly cast Max Burkholder) who’s obviously in deep therapy and way too into his vital signs decides to disarm the system and let in a potentially psychotic, my-home-is-a-cardboard-box dude (Edwin Hodge is great) whose out there screaming in the streets. Jail-bait sis Zoey (what a hottie Adelaide Kane is – sorry, I’m still a red-blooded man) is harboring the 18-year-old bane of Daddy’s existence, BF Henry (an excellent Tony Oller), who’s snuck in for a little bow-chicka-bow-wow. And then whaddayaknow, all hell breaks loose. Before you can say “boo,” the diabolical but very polite leader of the Mob of Masks and White Bathrobes shows up at the door. It’s up to Momma Hen (Lena Headey as the three-outfits-in-one-night, prim and proper Mary – thank you Game of Thrones for lending her to us for this!) and Dad-with-a-Ginormous-Arsenal James (Ethan Hawke kills it…rofl, I crack myself up!) to pull out all the stops to protect their pristine home and their imprudent little darlings.

Wickedness and perversion reign supreme as metal plating be damned (do you know that ridiculously expensive security system can easily be yanked down with just a truck and some chains?) – the ugly outside comes inside. The kids keep disappearing and Timmy continues to stealthily roam the house with his one red eye and black and crumbling bald head. With dozens of sadistic fools brandishing assorted weapons and who are simply behaving badly for no reason other than having been handed a 12-hour hall pass, it’s “Toodle-oo” to many…but you’ll just have to watch it to see who makes it out alive. For my taste, none of them should have, except for maybe Zoey (don’t give me a hard time, please, she wasn’t actually jail bait at the time of the filming – she was 23 playing a very naughty girl in a fetishistic Catholic school uniform).

DeMarco keeps the action moving and the heart pumping. There is some predictability in plot and not a lot of character development, but when you’re there for the death (pickin’ them off one-by-one) and destruction only (they really do a phenomenal job of tearing up that palatial home of James and Mary’s) who cares? The social commentary is a big flat, too, but I’m not really complaining. DeMarco goes on to amp up the pace up in Anarchy and Election Year…I can tell you that.

So I know you’re sitting here waiting with baited breath for the next Purge reviews…but I’m cautioning you now, don’t asphyxiate yourself (even if you’re into that sort of thing). I need you alive for this – I will be back and I need the all the hits I can get for my next incredibly intellectual analyses of Purge madness and mayhem. I have to preserve my very precarious position here at Pillow Talking – I don’t need them giving me the boot (hi guys) cuz I’ve got lots more to say and I always love making new friends (or enemies) out there in horrorland. That’s it ‘til next time…

I.M. Nosferatu hails from Gehenna (look it up). He has an encyclopedic mind for horror, sci-fi, paranormal, and the occult. He has myriad other hobbies and interests which may not be appropriate to print here (or to divulge at all), but his mission in life (and death) at least for our purposes, is to find good (or as he puts it “sick”), spine-chilling, blood-curdling media in the horror genre and tout it to the world. He is a straight shooter and calls ‘em like he sees ‘em. He will not suffer fools, sycophants, ass-kissers, brown-nosers, and other suck-ups. Pillow Talking is thrilled to have him on board as a guest blogger despite having never met him face-to-face and dealing solely through emails (at odd hours of the night).

If you have something in particular you would like for I.M. Nosferatu to review, you may contact him (if you dare) at IMNos4A2.gmail.com.

TWITTER: @IM_Nosferatu