The First Purge – Somer Valley FM Film Review

Welcome to the Somer Valley FM Film Review Blog. Unfortunately, you can’t hear my dulcet tones this way, but here is my film review show transposed into written form. This week it’s time to release all that anger at the world with The First Purge.

The First Purge is a prequel to The Purge and its subsequent sequels. It takes place on Staten Island, where the New Founding Fathers are performing a sociological experiment to curb civil unrest. There is a rising dissent in the community. Most residents including a high-level drug dealer Dmitri, Nya and her brother Isaiah all resisting the urge to Purge. However, as we know from the other Purge Movies, the Purge is used as a political tool. Gangs of military, hate groups and mercenaries descend on the Burroughs to kill the impoverished civilians. It is now up to Dmitri, Nya, Isaiah and everyone in the community to band together to protect what is theirs.

The First Purge is the standard Purge story. A group of survivors must get through the 12 hours. The plot, however, feels secondary to the haunted house style scares and excessive stylised violence that is on screen. The narrative is the thing that gets us from gruesome act to gruesome act, but apart from that, it fades into the background due to its simplistic nature.

The film is undoubtedly stylish. It pays attention to its set and costume design like previous films, leading to that nation-sized haunted house that we are all familiar with; however, The First Purge is also clumsy. The story, performance and dialogue take a back seat to the look of the film. There are moments in the movie, due to the acting or the delivery that make you cringe.

Finally, we get on to the political message. We all know that The Purge has never been subtle with its metaphor but in today’s current political environment, the dystopian nightmare feels too real. Halfway through one stylish murder sequence, I hoped that Donald Trump wasn’t watching because he might think that this is a good idea.  There is something about The Purge series that wants its cake and eats it too.

The First Purge is a functional film for what it is, an excuse to show hyperviolent trick or treaters. Other than that it lacks in a lot of the other basic areas, like story and character.

Thank you for reading the first film review Blog post. If you want to read a more in-depth review or look back to past glories of Somer Valley FM’s Premier Film critic, hop on over to corruptedrecord.com.