Writer: James DeMonaco
Director: Everardo Gout
Cast: Ana De La Reguera, Josh Lucas, Will Patton and Tenoch Huerta
After 10 months in America, Mexican immigrants, Adela and Juan find themselves faced with their first Purge. Unfortunately for them, this year’s annual day of chaos takes an even uglier turn as groups of anarchists refuse to stop purging the next day. Though they survived the night the young lovers must work together to survive a deadly new world.
This may be the scariest film of the Summer. The parallels to real-life are truly unsettling. The protagonists of the film Juan and Adela escape the cartels of Mexico to build a new life in America. Their American dream is interrupted by the insanity of an unyielding purge. Juan works on a ranch for a wealthy family whose eldest son openly shows his disdain for him, taking every opportunity to demean and undermine his work. Though the ranch is large and can surely offer refuge for its entire staff, all are instead provided bonuses to be used for safety. As the rich ranchers spend the night playing games in their impenetrable castle, their staff uses their bonuses to hunker together in a cramped location with other poor families, guarded by well-compensated heavily armed mercenaries. Once the night ends it is business as usual with the couple going back to their menial jobs only to discover the danger and destruction are just beginning. For the first time in the series, we witness the aftermath of the purge night in gory detail. Streets overrun with corpses, animals feeding on the fallen, and rampant destruction. Once it is evident that the purge rages on, in an ironic twist of fate the couple ends up risking their lives to save a family that left them to die despite having the resources to save them.
The antagonists are a motley bunch of mostly white rebels known as “forever purgers.” These lunatics bear an uncanny resemblance to MAGA supporters and capitol Stormers. Their manic behaviors and perverted patriotism are a familiar sight reminiscent of the assorted Karen’s and Kevin’s that currently plague our country. The film takes a deep unnerving dive into racism, the new patriotism, and wealth disparities, with the same cartoonish violence we’ve come to expect from the franchise. As with its predecessors, we witness the disparity in wealth by purposefully depicting the differences in how the poor and the wealthy “stay safe” during their yearly shutdown. Art imitates life as we observe the struggles of poor immigrants compared to that of the rich. In real life, the wealthy hide behind tax credits, racism, and voter suppression, the movie depicts this as veritable fortresses of steel and iron with one common thread keeping out the poor and disenfranchised. We get a terrifying view of a world where chaos is allowed to reign unchallenged through the film, not unlike how the Capitol Stormers and other anarchists have barely been charged for their crimes. In The Purge universe, the night of mayhem was created to allow a release of pent-up rage ultimately resulting in a thirst for the bloodshed that extends beyond the hand of the law. Intense and suspenseful the forever purge takes you on a wild ride to a dystopian nightmare that feels like it’s happening right now. Much like the hate-mongering groups plaguing America, the radicals have mixed messages on their agenda. Some are fighting the wealthy and others seeking to make the country “pure” by removing all that isn’t white.
The Forever Purge hits theaters on Friday, July 2, 2021.