This does feel like a premonition about this year’s presidential election. No wonder why America is failing. Honestly, it impossible to see how this franchise keeps gaining a sequel. I’m calling what it is as this is Halloween for morons. 2013’s The Purge had a good premise but turned into a slasher home invasion movie and 2014’s The Purge: Anarchy, a movie that should be hated, took it outside but still ended up as horrendous. So with this third installment this horror franchise, nothing changes. The Purge: Election Year just appeared just to make it a trilogy and just hopefully die soon.
People kill each for one day only and it’s the right decision to put an end to this. Which sounds like the right move forward, but the sinister government wants to put a stop this from happening. That’s your basic plot. With each passing film, the premise sounds interesting, but the execution of it all ultimately fails. It goes from horror to action in the style of something like White House Down but escaping from lunatics.
Frank Grillo and Elizabeth Mitchell offered up alright performances and did carry the movie on their feet. Granted, Grillo was the only positive thing about the last one. And we should’ve been following them throughout but instead, there are side characters that we are always trying to care about but don’t really.
Writer/director James DeMonaco just offers up the same problems especially with it’s sloppy directing and writing. There’s one purge-er that was so over the top crazy as she repeats, “I want my candy bar!” And the rest of the dialogue these character speak was just terrible. And what isn’t a dumb horror movie without the addition of jump scares? It takes a while to reach the end, which felt so long to get to and it doesn’t deliver showing it off as over the top.
The social commentary of political and social issues should be taken into consideration with what’s happening now with its themes. With that being said, it’s the most tolerable in the trilogy but that’s not saying much for a B-movie. Every single movie coming out of this franchise is terrible. So please stop making these.
Along with the bad writing, piss poor directing, and bad acting excluding Grillo and Mitchell, The Purge: Election Year delivers the same problems from the previous installments providing nothing new to this idiotic franchise.
Grade: D+
DC's Take 