#175 - The Purge (2013)

"Abrasive both in its depiction of violence and social message, The Purge is a vicious story about an annual 12 hour period where all crime is legal.

 The story follows one family holed up in their house as they try and survive the night, the problems starting when the son opens the door to a stranger being hunted down. It's a different way of dealing with the home invasion genre, and the premise that no-one may help you is a daunting one.

 The tension is decent for a standard horror fare replete with the jump scares and fetishized violence that one normally associates with this type of film. 

The framing of the destruction to explore political, racial, and class messages is so ham-fisted its like hammering a nail with a sledgehammer; every time something potentially with depth threatens to raise its head it's decapitated by a flurry of scene changes or gunshots - this is a 'message' for the easily bored audience who don't want to dwell on anything past a 'this good, that bad' lesson"

- 6/10