The Forever Purge (2021) Universal/Action-Horror RT: 103 minutes Rated R (strong bloody violence, language throughout) Director: Everardo Gout Screenplay: James DeMonaco Music: The Newton Brothers Cinematography: Luis Sansans Release date: July 2, 2021 (US) Cast: Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, Josh Lucas, Cassidy Freeman, Leven Rambin, Alejandro Edda, Will Patton, Veronica Falcon, Will Brittain, Sammi Rotbi, Gregory Zaragoza, Jeffrey Doornbos, Susie Abromeit. Box Office: $44.5M (US)/$77M (World)
Rating: ***
The political agenda driving The Forever Purge can be summed up in just four words: welcome to Trump’s America. Although it was filmed before the attack on the Capitol this past January, it feels like the makers are imagining what would come next if Trump’s supporters succeeded in having the election results overturned. The America depicted in this fifth (and supposedly final) entry in the series is a frightening dystopia ruled by hate, xenophobia, violence and mass murder. The scariest part is that it’s caused by the country’s leaders, a faceless entity called the NFFA (New Founding Fathers of America). The name alone is ominous. What they represent definitely brings to mind ideas expressed by the former President and embraced by his followers. In the movie, they’re taken to extremes.
Quick refresher, the NFFA has set aside one night a year (aka “The Purge”) for Americans to vent their frustrations without consequence. During this time, everything including murder is legal. Basically, it’s an excuse for every gun-toting idiot to go hog wild. It was banned when a new President came to power in 2016’s The Purge: Election Year. Obviously, the ban doesn’t last. Up to now, the Purge movies have been set in heavily populated cities where the annual Purge is a means for residents to release the pent-up rage that comes from living in poverty and inhumane conditions. Director Everardo Gout (Days of Grace) changes things up by relocating The Forever Purge to rural Texas where guns are a way of life. The switch from urban actioner to western is an interesting one.
The annual Purge has just been reinstated and the timing couldn’t have been worse for Adela (Reguera, Army of the Dead) and Juan (Huerta, Sin Nombre), a Mexican couple who sneak across the border to escape the drug cartels terrorizing their homeland. Ten months later, she’s working at a meat-packing plant and he’s a cowboy on a ranch owned by the affluent Tucker family. Family patriarch Caleb (Patton, No Way Out) is that rare breed of Texan liberals who acknowledge we’re all living on land stolen from the original owners. His son Dylan (Lucas, Ford v Ferrari) is presented as a racist with a grudge against the undocumented immigrants working for the family business. Despite this attitude, he loathes the Purge just as much as the Mexicans. Like them, he and his family go into lockdown mode before the festivities begin and stay in place until morning.
This is where The Forever Purge takes a sharp turn into nightmare territory. A group of armed nationalists wants the fun to continue past the time allotted by law. They’re out to establish an “Ever After Purge” in which they’re legally entitled to hunt and kill anybody that doesn’t represent the American way of life. This especially applies to immigrants and non-whites. Gangs of racist goons rise up and wage war in the streets. One such gang shows up on the Tucker ranch with the intention of executing them for being part of the wealthy privileged class. They kill Caleb after he calls them out for their hypocrisy. Fortunately, the others are saved by Juan and his friend T.T. (Edda, Narcos: Mexico).
Meanwhile, Adela and co-worker Darius (Rotbi, Django Unchained) are arrested after defending themselves against a couple of masked Ever After Purgers. They’re locked in a police wagon with a swastika-tattooed neo-Nazi thug who can identify each weapon being fired at them by rioters. In his words, “That is American music, mother f***er!” Eventually, Adela is able to escape and reunite with her husband who’s trying to outrun the mayhem with Dylan and his surviving family, pregnant wife Cassie (Freeman, Longmire) and sister Harper (Rambin, The Hunger Games). Together, the group starts heading for the border after Mexico announces it will welcome Americans fleeing the violence, but only for a few hours. After that, the border will close right up again.
The Forever Purge makes its political stance clear and so did the audience at the afternoon showing I attended at the local multiplex. Several scenes where Ever After Purgers are killed were met with applause. The scene that received the most enthusiastic response was one in which a particularly repellant fellow is shot point blank in the head. Comments confirming my theory about the audience’s politics were made throughout. My personal favorite came from a young college-age man who said, “That’s what you get for being a racist piece of s***!” after the aforementioned head-shot killing. I won’t confirm or deny my own personal beliefs, but I will admit I found the audience participation quite entertaining.
Now comes the part where I have to critique The Forever Purge as cinema. I can’t, in all good conscience, defend any of the Purge movies as fine art. They’re not. That doesn’t mean I don’t like them. I do. I’ve liked all of them. I like the latest one too. I like how Gout plunges us into a nightmare of societal collapse with the military trying futilely to restore order while crazies fuelled by hate and rage kill fellow humans for no other reason than being different. At times, The Forever Purge reminds me of a zombie movie (specifically, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead) with a band of survivors fighting their way to safety through throngs of savage killers. Gout, by way of cinematographer Luis Sansans, drives the terror home with Children of Men-like tracking shots through the carnage and mayhem.
The acting is a little better than you’d expect. Lucas convincingly plays a guy who seems like a racist at first. Later on, we learn that he doesn’t hate people of other races; he just believes all races should stick with their own kind. What’s strange is the movie appears to suggest this attitude is some kind of redeeming quality. It’s better to be a separatist than an outright racist. Uh, okay. In any event, he delivers a good performance. So does Reguera. Adela is a total bad ass! Early on, we find out she can handle an automatic weapon with ease. There’s a reason that’s explained later. Patton delivers a spot-on monologue about the fallacy of nationalism and white American privilege.
I find it interesting that Universal tends to release the Purge movies on Fourth of July weekends. It’s a shrewd marketing move on their part. What better way to celebrate American Independence by showing how our system of government can easily transform into something dangerous in the hands of madmen (or one madman). I’m going to stop before I say something that will create an angry debate among my readers. I’ll close by saying I enjoyed The Forever Purge a lot. I hope they decide to go ahead with a sixth (and final) movie. There’s more story to tell here.
