So, I wanted to see this movie for a while, though I had no MAJOR expectations. I was expecting this to just be a run-of-the-mill horror-thriller. Pardon that comment as I have seen no prior Purge movies. So, I walk into the theatre expecting a good time. I walked out with that, yeah, but far better than expected. Here are my thoughts.
Story
As I said, I have seen no prior Purge movies. However, I enjoyed this one's story as it's one of those "it could happen" scenarios. It's about a girl named Charlene Roan, who witnessed the brutal death of her family on purge night 18 years prior to this movie's events. What is purge night? One night, every year, all crimes are legal for 12 hours. That includes, you guessed it, murder. Charlene is running as a presidential candidate so that she can put an end to purge night for good. This means she has to survive through purge night. Seems easy at first, as she was instructed to stay in the White House under lockdown. That is, until a betrayal by her security team occurs. This means she, with her main bodyguard Leo Barnes, leave the White House through a secret passage as the traitors are now trying to kill them both. So, through mostly the rest of the movie, they're on the run to survive purge night while meeting new characters along the way. I don't want to spoil anything else from the story, but I can say that it's very well done. 8.0/10 for the story.
Characters
The characters were a mixed bag in my opinion. Some were good, some weren't so good. Charlene was a good main character with her ambitions and mission as a presidential candidate, Leo stopped at nothing to keep the V.I.P. alive, Joe (a deli owner) was hardcore at trying to survive while being funny at times. Now those are just examples of good characters in the movie. However, even the greatest movies don't have a perfect cast of characters (looking at you, Kylo Ren.). I know this movie is meant to be disturbing, yeah, but the main antagonist (the President keeping the purge alive) was just straight-up psychotic and frankly, that's pretty much all he was, not much else to him. Another example is a girl who seems to be a high school student who tries to steal a chocolate bar from Joe's deli at the beginning, and gets caught in the act. She became so angry that, on purge night, she tries to kill Joe over it. Oh and she mentions she "took care of mommy and daddy." Again, OVER A CANDY BAR. A little much, wouldn't you agree? 6.5/10 for the characters.
Special Effects
Not much to say here as there weren't a lot of special effects used. Pretty much just gun and blood effects and that's it. All I can say for the special effects is that they were as good as any other recent movies' gun and blood effects, I guess. 5.0/10 for the special effects as there wasn't a variety of them.
Music
This is probably the best part reviewed for this movie by me. What I mean by that is that there were good music choices for each respective situation. Disturbing scenes had disturbing music, fight scenes had intense fighting music, and so on. An example of a disturbing scene with disturbing music in this movie is one scene where it showed a tree full of nooses and dead bodies hanging from them while girls in wedding dresses danced around the tree and chilling choir music played. It made the scene even more disturbing and creepy than it would have been without it. As for licensed music, there were great choices for the very beginning of the movie and the end credits. 10/10 for the music.
Conclusion
In the end, it was a pretty good movie. It defied my expectations as, while I was expecting the tone to be dark, disturbing and suspenseful, it had a realistic story in the sense that it could actually happen if the government went crazy. So, in conclusion, I liked it. Therefore, my final verdict is a solid 7.0/10. Good story and music with a mixed bag of characters, but everything else is either meh or decent at best to me. Thank you for reading my first review. Until next time, my friends!
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