The Purge: Election Year

The Purge series hits a stunning low with this astonishingly incompetent third entry, with the narrative following a presidential candidate (Elizabeth Mitchell’s Charlie Roan) as she attempts to stay alive during the deadly annual event. (Frank Grillo reprises his role from The Purge: Anarchy as the one police officer that Charlie can trust, while Mykelti Williamson also appears as an affable shop owner who winds up assisting the pair.) Before it goes completely off the rails, The Purge: Election Year comes off as a watchable (if entirely disposable) thriller that boasts a handful of unexpectedly strong performances – with Grillo’s predictably grizzled turn as the hardened protagonist matched by a strong supporting cast that includes Kyle Secor, Ethan Phillips, and Raymond J. Barry. (It remains clear, however, that Williamson’s consistently agreeable work ensures that he remains the movie’s M.V.P.) The film’s transformation from passable thriller to interminable mess, then, comes right as the title event gets under way, as writer/director James DeMonaco, as is his way, has infused this portion of the proceedings with a relentlessly incoherent feel that’s heightened and perpetuated by an emphasis on flat-out unintelligible action sequences. And although DeMonaco has peppered the narrative with a few crowd-pleasing interludes (eg a reprehensible figure gets “purged” by a speeding van), The Purge: Election Year grows more and more interminable as it slowly proceeds through an almost unbearably overlong running time – with DeMonaco’s decision to take the story in a new direction just as it should be wrapping up nothing short of disastrous. It’s ultimately difficult to recall a film series that’s gone downhill quite as dramatically as The Purge, with, at the very least, the conclusion mercifully appearing to promise a definitive end to this utterly misbegotten franchise.

* out of ****