The Purge: Election Year (2016)
Directed by James DeMonaco
Two years after choosing not to kill the man who killed his son, former police sergeant Leo Barnes has become head of security for Senator Charlene Roan, the front runner in the next Presidential election due to her vow to eliminate the Purge. On the night of what should be the final Purge, a betrayal from within the government forces Barnes and Roan out onto the street where they must fight to survive the night.
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4 films that influenced The Purge: Election Year
What critics say influenced The Purge: Election Year
Not, perhaps, since “Soylent Green” has a future-shock parable been so memorably obvious in its metaphor.
, and — as I noted in my review of The Purge: Anarchy — probably the best satire on America since the grim futures that 1970s SF (think: Rollerball and Soylent Green) showed us.
Another thing he excels at is borrowing from other really good genre movies like Clockwork Orange, Soylent Green, The Warriors, Total Recall, and especially John Carpenter’s Escape from New York.
DeMonaco, who wrote the so-so remake of John Carpenter’s classic “Assault on Precinct 13,” once again mines similar material.
Focused on a group of strangers who are stranded in L.A. during the chaos, and who come into contact with malevolent forces as well as a band of rebels (who hijack the airwaves to preach insurgency), Anarchy played like a hybrid of The Warriors and They Live, with the great Frank Grillo’s grieving ex-military hardass Leo Barnes functioning as a 21st century variation on Escape from New York’s Snake Plissken .
As someone who grew up watching films like Dawn of the Dead, Alien, They Live, Videodrome, or even Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I’m a huge fan of any genre movie that incorporates social commentary into its themes, and The Purge: Election Year does it quite successfully (albeit, not nearly as subtly as the films listed above).
Cut-and-dry action thrills find themselves caught somewhere between Death Race and The Warriors – but there’s still a reality worth fearing.