Review: ‘The First Purge’ — Purge Lives Matter
No more running from racists
Last week, I wrote a post about the unlikely success of the Purge franchise and how the films have gotten increasingly political and diverse with each chapter. And with the fourth installment, the First Purge, being a prequel that explores the first Purge “experiment” almost exclusively through the eyes of brown and black people, I was hoping that the trends started in the first three films would continue to intensify.
And boy, I wasn’t disappointed.
Watch the trailer for the First Purge below.
The First Purge takes place at a time of rising domestic turmoil fueled by economic instability, lack of mobility, and violent protests. In an effort to find an outlet for these tensions, the government of the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) has approved a “sociological experiment” created by Dr. May Updale (Marisa Tomei) that theorizes that a government-sanctioned 12-hour lawless period where citizens can release their pent-up anger without repercussions will ultimately lead to a more tranquil society. With New York’s Staten Island chosen as the location for this first experimental Purge, the eyes of the NFFA and the nation are trained on the borough, with the NFFA planning a nationwide rollout of the Purge should the night go “successfully”, yielding high participation and casualties. If residents decide to stay on the island, they are given $5,000 and a pair of glowing video contact lenses that allow Updale’s team to track their movements and record whatever they see.
While the Purge films have been steadily getting more diverse, the heroes of the first three films have all been white — James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) and his family in the first film, Leo “Sergeant” Barnes (Frank Grillo) in the Purge: Anarchy, and Barnes and Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) in the Purge: Election Year. That streak ends in the First Purge, with drug kingpin Dmitri (Y’lan Noel), anti-Purge activist Nya (Lex Scott Davis), and her younger brother Isaiah (Joivan Wade) taking the lead in a film where not one white actor plays a good guy, completing the trajectory tentatively started in the first film of examining how the Purge disproportionately harms the poor and people of color. The First Purge — which is written by James DeMonaco, who wrote and directed the first three Purge films — is told almost entirely from the perspective of black characters, making the switch to director Gerard McMurray (who is black and was an associate producer on Fruitvale Station) a wise choice.
In addition, the First Purge seems to expect a certain degree of literacy regarding issues facing the black community. The anti-Purge protest seen in the beginning of the film is heavily influenced by Black Lives Matter protests, and shares the same concerns that government-sanctioned violence that disproportionately harms black people is caused by the systemic devaluing of black lives. A shot of masked, nightstick-wielding police officers descending on a prone black man is reminiscent of the infamous Rodney King video that eventually led to the LA riots, and a mention that arms dealers attempted to flood Staten Island with military-grade weaponry ahead of the Purge echoes a widely-believed (and mostly proven) theory that the US government pushed both guns and crack cocaine into American inner cities during the 80s, either indifferent to or hopeful that black communities would effectively destroy themselves.
All of this plays into a not-so-surprising reveal that, while hinted at in previous films, has never been stated explicitly: that the targeting of minorities isn’t something the Purge evolved into organically, but was what the NFFA wanted the Purge to be from the very beginning. However, as we watch this play out when mercenaries (Blackwater gets a shout out), Klu Klux Klan members, and neo-Nazis invade the island to increase the body count when residents choose to pull pranks and party rather than murder, the First Purge — as well as perhaps the entire franchise — moves in a whole new direction.
In the previous three films, perhaps the scariest aspect of the franchise was that anyone could be a Purger, whether a stranger, a chance acquaintance, or someone close to you. While it was understandable that someone might have to kill a Purger in self-defense, this was tempered by the fact that many Purgers were simply regular people who were convinced by the NFFA’s propaganda that they were actually fulfilling some kind of twisted patriotic duty. But in the First Purge, virtually every Purger is a gun for hire or an avowed racist, willing foot soldiers in a one-sided race war for white supremacy. And therefore, like the Nazis in so many World War II movies, the Purgers in the First Purge are now enemies who can be killed without remorse, and perhaps even with some righteous gratification.
In one part of the Last Purge, Dmitri strips down to his undershirt, arms himself to the teeth, and battles his way through a housing project tower swarming with Purgers. It’s a sequence reminiscent of one of my favorite movies, Die Hard — or in this case, as my friend Mario perfectly put it, “Die Hood”. But instead of thieves posing as international terrorists or average citizens overcome by bloodlust, we essentially have a building full of militia members motivated not by love of country, but by racism and/or loyalty to a political party equated with the Nazis. As a result, there were times when the audience I watched the movie with clapped and cheered in response to Dmitri killing a Purger in a particularly satisfying way. That’s because when it comes to killing Nazis or anyone else who wants to take part in the extermination of an entire race of people, there is no moral ambiguity, nuance, or devil’s advocacy. When Dmitri, despite being established as a violent drug lord, kills a Purger who wants to kill Dmitri, his family, and probably every other black/brown person in America, we can cheer without guilt or shame.
Why does this matter? The Purge franchise has demonstrated a unique talent for playing to its young audience’s feelings about the sociopolitical moment, whether it’s the 2016 election or rising awareness of systemic racism. Right now, one of the scariest and most depressing things in America is the resurgence of unrepentant, proactive racism, embodied by the alt-right, Donald Trump and his followers, and the racist and discriminatory policies his administration is enacting.
But while the idea of being terrorized by racists is understandably scary, the idea of fighting back against racists and kicking their asses feels awesome, empowering, and cathartic. It’s a feeling we’ve gotten in Quentin Tarantino movies like Inglourious Basterds, where a group of Jewish-American commandos are sent behind enemy lines to brutally slaughter Nazis as a form of psychological warfare, and Django Unchained, where an emancipated slave turned gunslinger doles out vengeance across the deep South on a mission to rescue his wife. And recently, we’ve been able to experience it over social media by watching neo-Nazi Richard Spencer get punched in the face and turned into a meme, or when lawyer Aaron Schlossberg was hilariously exposed and shamed when his racist rant in a New York restaurant was captured on video and went viral.
I can imagine that young people — who are increasingly liberal and welcoming of diversity — want to see racists put in their place. So after three films watching brown people running and hiding from Purgers, the First Purge portrays a black man not as a victim, but as a hero and aggressor, boldly and fearlessly taking the fight to his racist enemies and showing them no mercy. Trump’s America is a scary enough place for the nation’s young people, and they have to live in it every day. In light of that, perhaps DeMonaco realized that it was time to pivot from playing on young viewers’ fears to showing them a place where those fears can be vicariously confronted and overcome.
At the end of the Purge: Election Year, we hear news reports that the NFFA and Purgers are staging violent uprisings across the country in response to the election of an anti-Purge presidential candidate. The Purge films have already switched genres from horror to straight-up action, so maybe the next chapter will involve something entirely different, like a civil war fought between Purgers and racial minorities. Stranger things have happened — the Fast and the Furious franchise started out as movies about street racing before becoming car-based international spy extravaganzas. And personally, I would love to see a black member of the anti-Purge resistance deliver a version of this:
