''Purge' the urge to ignore scary political horror film
Can a scarifying, ugly and depraved political horror tale be a guilty pleasure if I experience no guilt enjoying its riotously exploitative B-movie influences and tactics?
After writing and directing “The Purge” (2013) and “The Purge: Anarchy” (2014), New York filmmaker James DeMonaco hits a horror jackpot with “The Purge: Election Year.”
If you're not familiar with “The Purge” premise, DeMonaco envisions a near-future United States where a political group called The New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) takes control of the government and institutes the annual Purge, 12 hours in which citizens can commit any heinous crimes they want without fear of penalties.
Or as Wall Street bankers call it, “just another day.”
Presidential candidate Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) promises she will kill the Purge, if elected.
She says the NFFA uses the Purge to cull the nation's poor, sick and elderly, thereby reducing federal welfare and medical costs so the old, white and wealthy 1 percenters can continue to live in prosperity.
As a teen, Roan witnessed her parents and brother being tortured and killed during the Purge. So, it's personal, too.
Roan insists on staying at her Washington office during the Purge, something that rankles Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo), now the head of her security detail after surviving the Purge from two years earlier.
When Barnes' own team members help NFFA agents set up Roan's assassination, Barnes escapes with the senator to the streets during the most dangerous night of the year, or as one reveler calls it, “Halloween for adults!”
DeMonaco crafts a surrealistic survival chase merging dark political satire with a sleazier version of Walter Hill's “Odyssey” update “The Warriors.”
A woman on a bench sings a nursery rhyme while watching the body of a man burn on the street. Two blood-splattered women dressed in sparkly costumes dance in nightmarish slow motion, drunk on the evening's carnage.
Hooligans chortle as they lop off the heads of victims.
DeMonaco augments this ultra-creepy stuff by adding “gotcha!” shocks and surprises around every street corner. Good thing that Barnes carries a zillion bullet magazines to keep his semi-automatic weapon firing.
Barnes and Roan take cover in a convenience store operated by Joe Dixon (Mykelti Williamson), an African-American small-business owner struggling for economic survival with his immigrant employee Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria). Marcos says he's a really good marksman. (Foreshadowing alert!)
Dixon is good buds with Laney (Betty Gabriel), a tough, former street kid who now rides around in a rescue van helping Purge survivors and political radical Dante Bishop (Edwin Hodge), concocting his own Bernie-like revolution to take back the country from the greedy and corrupt.
“Election Year” isn't subtle. It beats us over the head with political metaphors and direly warns us about what might happen if church and state actually merge in America. (Strangely enough, as in “Independence Day: Resurgence,” this film predicts a woman president.)
DeMonaco focuses on the most gruesome and visually violent crimes for this thriller.
But he carefully avoids sexual assault or any deviancy that would certainly take place during a Purge.
What? Did he not want audiences to feel disturbed, or uncomfortable?
“The Purge: Election Year”
★ ★ ★
Starring: Frank Grillo, Elizabeth Mitchell, Mykelti Williamson
Directed by: James DeMonaco
Other: A Universal Pictures release. Rated R for language, violence. 115 minutes