It’s an election year, and nothing makes ordinarily rational human beings want to gruesomely murder each other more than discussing politics. The country divides itself up into camps and then digs into the party-line dogma as hard as it can, hoping to outyell the other guy with little mind paid to what’s actually being said. Honestly, it’s a small wonder that each election cycle doesn’t end with widespread waves of unrestrained killing and destruction. Regardless of the particulars, few things are more insufferable than political bloviating, except maybe rants from your friend who’s just gotten into eating paleo.
And so today, The Purge: Election Year trailer arrives both as dark prophecy and wish-fulfillment fantasy, envisioning a future not too far from our own where we’re free to eliminate all those who don’t share our viewpoint. The first two Purge films have put a satirical bent on the typical home-invasion horror model, and it looks like the third installment of this runaway franchise will lay on the commentary even thicker. This time around, political hotshot Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) wants to take public office in order to abolish the Purge Night tradition of legalized murder that took her family so long ago. Some of her more radical constituents have grown rather fond of their annual murder sprees, and decide to take advantage of what might just be the last Purge to off her and secure their own future. Frank Grillo steps in as the Sergeant tasked with protecting her, and from the looks of the trailer embedded above, he does a pretty shabby job.
The last two Purge pictures were surprisingly competent works of terror, not quite the cheap cash-grabs that horror sequels tend to be. The trailer above, set to a haunting rendition of “America The Beautiful,” could keep up the series’ strong track record. At the very least, it’ll provide us all with a juicy opportunity to joke about how something like the Purge could really come to pass under a Trump presidency (“Don’t worry, the only people to die will be the losers”), and then shift uncomfortably as we realize the gravity of what we’re saying.
