The First Purge (2018) Dir: Gerard Mcmurray
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'The Purge' films aren't the greatest ever made, nor would they ever try to be, but they are all very watchable. I've been working my way through this popular horror franchise bit by bit, and Gerard McMurray's prequel was next up. It has the second lowest rating in the franchise, according to Letterboxd, but I wasn't exactly expecting a classic.
I'll begin by discussing the visuals, which I found pretty disappointing. The films before haven't necessarily been stunning masterpieces or anything, but they all had something memorable shot-wise. This film definitely did not. Even the action sequences were shot poorly, and the little bits added to make the film look more interesting, like glowing contact lenses, did nothing for me.
Unfortunately, the film was full of bad dialogue. However, there were some earlier lines in the film that I really liked for their poetic and lyrical nature. I wish there had been more of those, rather than them being a couple of throw-away lines of dialogue.
I didn't like the characters at first, they all seemed to be stereotype - it felt like very lazy writing. However, I will say that some of them grew on me, as the film progressed, mainly because they actually began to express some unique traits. That said, the majority of the characters involved were still very poorly written.
The story wasn't the best. It lacked a lot of the nuance that the previous films have aimed for, not that they have always succeeded, in fairness. Some of the social commentary was very on-the-nose, but then, these films have always been very explicitly political. There were some vaguely good moments, but only one that I really liked - that being when one of the protagonist's turned into John McLane for a little bit.
None of the acting was particularly strong, but, of the many cast members, the most notable performances were provided by the likes of Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis and Joivan Wade. Of these three, I'd say that Davis was the most enjoyable, but Noel has the strongest individual scenes.
There were a number of characters who felt incredibly wasted, for various reasons, but really should've been used more. I was so disappointed that both Rotimi Paul and Marissa Tomei in particular did almost nothing after a point in the film. They both felt like important characters to the plot, but neither one factored into anything much by the end of the film.
Others that warranted at least a mention were Mugga, Patch Darragh, Steve Harris, Mo McRae, Luna Lauren Velez, Kristen Solis, Jermel Howard, Siya, Christian Robinson, D.K. Bowser, Mitchell Edwards, and Derek Basco. Mugga and Darragh were the most watchable of these names, for anyone wondering.
Overall, I can't pretend like this wasn't the worst action of the franchise so far, and comfortably so. It lacked the intensity, the uniqueness or the purpose of any of the other films, and meandered through a strangely tepid story, which really should have been a lot more chaotic and action-packed.
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