{"id":9836,"date":"2024-12-10T17:58:59","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T22:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9836"},"modified":"2024-12-10T17:58:59","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T22:58:59","slug":"the-forever-purge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/10\/the-forever-purge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forever Purge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Forever Purge<\/strong> (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 103 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, language throughout)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Everardo Gout\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James DeMonaco\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: The Newton Brothers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Luis Sansans\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 2, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $44.5M (US)\/$77M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

The political agenda driving The Forever Purge<\/strong> can be summed up in just four words: welcome to Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s caused by the country\u2019s 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\u2019re taken to extremes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Quick refresher, the NFFA has set aside one night a year (aka \u201cThe Purge\u201d) for Americans to vent their frustrations without consequence. During this time, everything including murder is legal. Basically, it\u2019s an excuse for every gun-toting idiot to go hog wild. It was banned when a new President came to power in 2016\u2019s The Purge: Election Year. Obviously, the ban doesn\u2019t 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 <\/strong>to rural Texas where guns are a way of life. The switch from urban actioner to western is an interesting one.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The annual Purge has just been reinstated and the timing couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s working at a meat-packing plant and he\u2019s 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

This is where The Forever Purge<\/strong> takes a sharp turn into nightmare territory. A group of armed nationalists wants the fun to continue past the time allotted by law. They\u2019re out to establish an \u201cEver After Purge\u201d in which they\u2019re legally entitled to hunt and kill anybody that doesn\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, Adela and co-worker Darius (Rotbi, Django Unchained) are arrested after defending themselves against a couple of masked Ever After Purgers. They\u2019re 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, \u201cThat is American music, mother f***er!\u201d Eventually, Adela is able to escape and reunite with her husband who\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Forever Purge<\/strong> 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\u2019s politics were made throughout. My personal favorite came from a young college-age man who said, \u201cThat\u2019s what you get for being a racist piece of s***!\u201d after the aforementioned head-shot killing. I won\u2019t confirm or deny my own personal beliefs, but I will admit I found the audience participation quite entertaining.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Now comes the part where I have to critique The Forever Purge<\/strong> as cinema. I can\u2019t, in all good conscience, defend any of the Purge movies as fine art. They\u2019re not. That doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t like them. I do. I\u2019ve 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 <\/strong>reminds me of a zombie movie (specifically, George Romero\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting is a little better than you\u2019d expect. Lucas convincingly plays a guy who seems like a racist at first. Later on, we learn that he doesn\u2019t hate people of other races; he just believes all races should stick with their own kind. What\u2019s strange is the movie appears to suggest this attitude is some kind of redeeming quality. It\u2019s 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\u2019s a reason that\u2019s explained later. Patton delivers a spot-on monologue about the fallacy of nationalism and white American privilege.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I find it interesting that Universal tends to release the Purge movies on Fourth of July weekends. It\u2019s 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\u2019m going to stop before I say something that will create an angry debate among my readers. I\u2019ll close by saying I enjoyed The Forever Purge <\/strong>a lot. I hope they decide to go ahead with a sixth (and final) movie. There\u2019s more story to tell here.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Forever Purge (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 103 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, language throughout)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Everardo Gout\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James DeMonaco\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: The Newton Brothers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Luis Sansans\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 2, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, Josh Lucas, Cassidy Freeman, Leven Rambin, Alejandro Edda, Will Patton, Veronica Falcon, Will Brittain, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The-Forever-Purge-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9836"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10100,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836\/revisions\/10100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}