The Purge was a dirt-cheap little thriller that was elevated largely thanks to its cast. But it also made ten times its budget in a weekend, so needless to say The Purge: Anarchy is on the way. And the first teaser, while delivering on the promise of the central conceit, also might go very, very wrong.
First off, if you missed it, here’s the teaser:
“How will you purge?” Nice to know that the competition for worst tagline is all sewn up.
Really, The Purge: Anarchy is delivering on what the first one should have gotten into; we never really got a sense of the scale of The Purge, with all the blood and chaos supposedly unwinding mostly something we were told about instead of something we were shown. That said, hopefully they thought out the political message this time, because flipping the class dynamic on its head might go very, very wrong.
The Purge was not terribly subtle in its political message, namely that the broke non-white man gets screwed in America, and plugging your ears and pretending nothing’s going on is going to bite you on the ass. The message was a bit muddled not least by the fact that, well, basically if a kid had learned to keep his head down and be a selfish jerk, the plot wouldn’t have happened. But James DeMonaco didn’t exactly try to hide how he views the world.
This time around, though, it’s the white people being chased around by a bunch of ethnic minorities and poor people in masks, and that’s iffy territory in a world where Fox News tries to convince its viewers Black people go around punching them out because old people still think race war is a “thing.” It’s doubtful DeMonaco is going to deliver some sort of conservative rant; his dislike of the class system shines through in this trailer, especially the quick bit of a family killing dear old dad to get his money. And it’s true this is a minute-long teaser mostly consisting of stuff catching on fire and said sheltered white people whining at each other.
That said, one hopes DeMonaco’s got a bit more subtlety this time around. Otherwise, he might have a hit on his hands for exactly the wrong reason.