The Forever Purge review

THE FOREVER PURGE: 

NEVER-ENDING PURGE IS MORE OF THE SAME! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

It isn’t just for one night anymore in The Forever Purge

 

            The Purge is back (Despite being abolished at the end of Election Year) and this time it’s forever in The Forever Purge, the fifth and supposed final installment of the Purge franchise which started back in 2013. Despite earning mostly mixed reviews, the Purge series was very successful financially garnering three sequels, a prequel (2018’s The First Purge), and even a short-lived television series…that I completely forgot existed. 

            Quick thoughts on what I thought of the previous films, the first film I didn’t get into that much and thought it was just a generic home invasion movie with a few good scares and a pretty enjoyable performance by Rhys Wakefield as the leader of the Purgers, the second (The Purge: Anarchy) and third (The Purge: Election Year) ones I think are really solid and significant improvements over the first movie because they took the Purge outside and thought outside of the box with the possibilities of how the Purge works and it had the most compelling characters that made you want to see them survive the Purge, and the prequel, The First Purge I didn’t like very much but I was interested in learning how the Purge started even if it didn’t give much of a payoff. 

            Now, we come to this fifth chapter, The Forever Purge that will hopefully wrap everything up, so this franchise doesn’t fall victim to the repetitive nature of another film series with the involvement of Michael Bay (The Rock, The Island, Transformers franchise). Well, given how this one has been marketed as the “Be all, end all” of the Purge to the point where it’s no longer one night a year surely, this one will spice things up a notch and give us stuff we’ve never seen before in the franchise…or it’ll just be another case of bigger not necessarily meaning better, it’s the latter unfortunately. 

            The Forever Purge has its thrilling moments as well as some timely themes, but aside from making a Purge that lasts forever, it doesn’t do much new with the formula. It’s still people running and surviving the Purge with little variety, but it has enough grisly violence and terror to hopefully satisfy fans of the series. 

            The Purge has been reinstated and after another night of legal crime and death, the United States of America begins to go back to normal with crime now being illegal again…supposedly. However, when a group of people decide that one night a year isn’t enough, they unlawfully continue their own Purge that lasts forever appropriately titled The Forever Purge thus plunging the entire country into war and hysteria with a normal Mexican couple right in the middle of it at a Texas ranch. 

            When the news is heard that Mexico is allowing unarmed American civilians to flee there to escape the Forever Purge, a group of survivors race against time to fend off the Purgers, cross the Mexican border, and hopefully make it out alive. 

            The film stars Ana de la Reguera (Eastbound & Down, Capadocia, Goliath) as Adela, Tenoch Huerta (Sin nombre, Narcos: Mexico, Spectre) as Juan, Josh Lucas (American Psycho, A Beautiful Mind, The Lincoln Lawyer) as Dylan Tucker, Cassidy Freeman (Smallville, Longmire, Fender Bender) as Cassie Tucker, Leven Rambin (The Hunger Games, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, Mank) as Harper Tucker, Alejandro Edda (Fear the Walking Dead, Narcos: Mexico, American Made) as T.T., and Will Patton (Armageddon, The Punisher, Falling Skies) as Caleb Tucker. 

            Overall, The Forever Purge is likely to satisfy fans of the long-running series, but it never quite embraces its effectively chilling and often timely narrative. There are some interesting themes about racism and immigration that are being discussed, but in execution, they feel a bit forced and not fully realized nor does it give much of a reason behind the Forever Purge outside of some Texas folks being pissed off that the annual Purge is over. 

            Had the ideas been more fleshed out, I think we would have gotten a damn good Purge movie, but as is it’s the perfect definition of “Meh”. I like these ideas that are being explored, but they don’t give enough time to explore them to their fullest potential, more like things to keep the plot going rather than legit themes worth talking about at the end of the film. 

            The characters are pretty stock with a few exceptions like the Mexican couple and the Texas ranch family. The Purge: Anarchy or Election Year didn’t have the best characters, at least they gave me enough to care about whether they survived or not, this time it was only a select few. 

            The Forever Purge definitely lives up to its name as it’s a never-ending Purge, but with the reliance on these tired horror clichés, mostly forgettable characters, and a very disappointing and anticlimactic final act, this Purge is best kept once a year because when you’re Purging forever and doing the exact same stuff as in the earlier films, it gets boring after a while and bored is not something I should be feeling watching a scary movie. 

            Oh well, at least it’s a little better than The First Purge!