So this is how it starts. In The First Purge—fourth in the series of violent, bankable Purge movies that have been hitting theaters since 2013—a political party called the New Founding Fathers has come to power, and theyve made a grand promise to a nation ailing from economic, housing, and every other variety of political crisis. “The American dream is dead,” says the new president. “We will do whatever it takes to let you dream again.”
Whatever it takes, in this case, means loosening the safety valve thats kept everyone from going mad from repressed violence. (Or so it seems.) If youve seen any of the other Purge movies, you know how thats done: for 12 hours, from dusk till dawn, all crime—murder, theft, arson, you name it—is made legal.
After three movies worth of hunting, stabbing, breaking and entering, and setting people on fire, all carried out in costume masks grotesque enough to qualify as a violent crime themselves, it was only a matter of time before we got a prequel telling us just how this annual bloodsport was born. No one will be surprised to learn that it was always government-sanctioned; thats been clear from the first movie. But The First Purge is bold—or irresponsible, pending how you feel about a movie like this ripping some of its violence from the headlines—enough to suggest that the Purge itself has white supremacist roots. (If you dont want to know any more about the films plot, you should probably stop reading here.) According to director Gerard McMurrays film, the annual events roots are in a secret plan to weed out—you guessed it—Americas black, brown, and poor.
As far as most of the nation knows, though, the Purge began as an experiment devised by social behaviorist Dr. Wade (Marisa Tomei), known to the public as the Architect. She wants to figure out just how quickly a society given the opportunity to descend into anarchy will do so. Its her idea to run a control experiment; its the New Founding Fathers idea to choose Staten Island, New York, as the site of that experiment. And its the movies decision to offer us a Staten Island thats populated pretty much only with people of color.
So, yes—its science-fiction, specifically on that last point. But thats just how genre movies work. People on both sides of the aisle are going to accuse this movie of being too woke for its own good, but in the dirty tradition of cheap American genre movies, the Purge films have been making a meal of racial and class-based tensions all along. The first one, which starred Ethan Hawke, took place in a monied, predominantly white suburb, which is a funny thing to remember as you watch this one; I anticipate a sequel that fully connects the thread from here to there.
In the meantime, we have The First Purge, which specifically focuses on Nya (Lex Scott Davis, also in the new SuperFly), an activist from the projects whos raising her little brother, Isaiah (Joivan Wade). Nyas ex-boyfriend, Dmitri (Ylan Noel, of HBOs Insecure), is the local druglord—check the gold chain, leather jacket, and impeccable fade. Its Dmitris plan to keep himself, his gang, and his stash safe during the Purge because, as he points out, their deaths would lose him money. Its Nyas plan, meanwhile, to look after Isaiah—but Isaiah, tired of being poor, decides to try his hand at the Purge instead.
Heres where its worth noting that the government, truly doubling down on this “social-experiment” bit, has built incentives into the trial. Staying on Staten Island for the entire 12-hour rite earns you $5,000. “Participating”—which should, in theory, entail crimes less grievous than murder, but mostly just amounts to murder—earns you extra. To keep track of who does what, the government supplies participants with specialized contacts armed with cameras. Dr. Wade and the presidents chief of staff watch from a control room, shocked, at first, by how few people are killing each other. Dont you worry; the government has a solution for that unforeseen issue.
I kept wanting to scold The First Purge for thumbing its nose at the Trump administration with such obviousness—for having Nya fight off an attacker who tries to grab her by the pussy, for pointing out that the purgers with ulterior motives speak Russian. And by the way, it is all thunderingly obvious: the master plan here is a form of race-baiting conservatism that would have been at home in the Reagan era, to say nothing of our own. Even so, it is rare that a film says to vulnerable communities: “Your government is trying to kill you.” I kept coming back to that fact.
Despite their significant flaws, what the Purge movies have shown us—what many movies with humble budgets, made to thrill rather than to win prestige respect, show us—is that genre fare is a ready-made social mirror. Quick, cheap, light on their feet, these projects can respond to national ills with a flexibility that more “important” movies being pushed through the traditional Hollywood system cannot.
If only, in this case, that speed were matched by more smarts. The First Purge is very clearly nonsense, and its not ashamed of that—nor should it be. Every so often, that nonsense stumbles into a surprising idea, a striking image, or something else worth clinging to when you leave the theater. This is very much a movie designed to indulge the vicarious thrills of seeing a community of minorities stick up for themselves—even as incidents such as a brutal church massacre go out of their way to echo real life. The movies at its kinetic, hyperbolic best, however, when it abandons obvious politics and basically becomes Black Rambo, a throwback to an era of black heroism in film that didnt need this movies conceptual antics to strike a nerve. On the other hand, to the The First Purges credit, it genuinely does strike a nerve. Its bound to be bolder than whatever mainstream Hollywood comes up with to replace it.
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