While The Purge franchise’s whole ethos has been to mix political allegory with horror and action tropes, in regards to the first three films, the ideas have been much more interesting than the actual final product. Considering the new political climate we’ve arrived at since the third instalment, The Purge: Election Year, the fourth film should have plenty to chew on.
Franchise creator James DeMonaco has revealed that the fourth film in the series will deviate from what viewers have seen in the first three films. The film will be titled The Purge: The Island to give you a not-so-subtle hint as to where this is going, and for the first time DeMonaco himself won’t be directing, instead handing the reigns to Gerard McCurdy.
The Purge: The Island will travel back to the timeline of the franchise and be a prequel, and will take us through the first ever purge: an experimental test on Staten Island. It opens up some interesting avenues and should allow the film to explore characters not used to the violence and rules in the franchise, and reveal how the new founding fathers in the film came up with the concept.
DeMonaco went on to explain:
“I was wondering how you get people to stay for the first Purge, and what they do is they start monetising it. People from Staten Island can easily go to Brooklyn for the evening, so what they do is start promising very decent sums of money for the very poor people in the neighbourhood. It becomes a monetisation of murder and violence, incentivising killing and keeping people around for them to be victims.
So you see the inception of how grotesque the idea of the Purge is, the manipulation upon the society. That’s where it becomes, sadly, I think, very topical right now with the current administration — and also terrifying, because no one’s prepared for what’s about to happen”.
The film begins shooting later this month and DeMonaco believes it will be the most topical film in the franchise so far. DeMonaco’s ideas sounds great, unfortunately for The Purge, thus far those ideas haven’t exactly translated to the superb combination of political commentary and gory violence the previous films have promised us.
Hopefully The Island can surprise us and feel fresh with its new director and new setting. And hopefully it doesn’t become a prescient vision of a future reality.
#Peace.Love.ThePurge
