The Purge: Anarchy - The Real Purge [Spoilers level: Low]

The Purge: Anarchy is officially the first sequel I review which's predecessor was also reviewed. Not only that, I also wrote a piece when the sequel was announced a bit over a year ago, making this the most talked about thing on this blog. Whatever that entails.

As you may have read in my review of the first film, the concept terrified me. The idea that more or less an entire nation (or at least the majority) agrees that letting people run rampage once a year is a good idea, is baffling and terrifying. I don't really care that it's unlikely, the fact that it happened in this fictional world is horrifying enough. Unfortunately the original film squandered its concept on a very typical home-invasion piece. The only thing different from any other film of a similar subgenre was that the killers were fully allowed to do what they wanted to do. The sequel, luckily, goes further.

Despite my low hopes in something different from a sequel, Blumhouse actually did deliver a different subgenre film set within the same universe as the first. Instead of being trapped in a house with a more or less ordinary family, we follow three different set of characters on the night. One poor woman and her daughter, a middle-class married couple, and a man out for revenge. Immediately we see that this will be different, just the man who's planning to participate in the purge guarantees that. We also get introduced to a whole lot of people and different ideas this time. We get to see one of the members of the New Founding Fathers of America, and we also get to see the resistance that is lurking in the background. We get the idea that there actually is a significant part of the population who are against the entirely crazy notion of the purge.

Overall this film is just better in every way from the first film. The characters are better written, the events are scarier and more plentiful, and it's set across several blocks in a city making it seem a lot more real and big than before. After seeing this I can't quite understand why the first film was the way it was. Did they initially mean for the series to be more like the first film showed, but they actually listened to their audience who mostly said the home-invasion setting was the worst part? After watching the sequel the only good thing I have to say about the first film is that it sets up the second film better. You know what the rules are, you know how people act, you know the general idea. Even though they re-introduce some of them for fresh viewers, it helps set you in the mood. You've been through it before, and you just want to get through it again.

When I saw the 109-minute run time of the film I feared that it would be a bit dragged out and stalled, but they managed to stuff every minute with something. Be it action and terror, or some of the minor character development one might expect from this kind of film. You will never wind yourself bored or antsy to get on, if you're like me they will be welcome breaks inbetween the rushes.

Without giving too much away, this film too hints that there might be more films to come, which doesn't surprise me. After the success of both the first one, and the success this one has had so far, there almost has to come another film, so they've set it up nicely to be able to do just that. I doubt it will be the political prequel I envisioned in my previous blog posts, but I wouldn't be too surprised if the third film ties up the "contemporary" story and they will have a forth film go back to the tell the story of how it all started. All I know is that I will definitely be back to see how the third film turns out.