The Forever Purge (2021)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s this weird see-saw at play throughout the Purge series in that every new instalment becomes increasingly more politically and cinematographically ambitious, even as the law of diminishing returns makes the results feel increasingly redundant. I suspect that if fifth (!) instalment The Forever Purge had shown up without its predecessors, we would be having a different conversation. But it doesn’t: progressing in time past The Purge: Election Year, this entry shows what every viewer of the first film had pointed out: how do you contain the violence of the Purge to a mere twenty-four hours? Wouldn’t a spillover be inevitable? Here it is – the Purge film for the post-Capitol coup attempt era, despite having been completed a year before. Not that this is the only element in which the series has reflected the increasing violence inherent in the contemporary American political discourse – this first full-fledged Purge sequel since 2016 takes place in the American southwest, not only lending a neo-western atmosphere to the proceedings, but squarely engaging with the hateful rhetoric aimed at Hispanic immigration. As far as the series goes, The Forever Purge does keep the uncomfortable, downright ugly feeling of previous films: it’s a blunt social horror film built on a belief that hell is others. At least the special effects have caught up to the ambitions of the story: this instalment contains a few wide-scale shots conveying the large-scale destruction of the situation, and escalates the situation into a national crisis. There may or may not be a sequel, and I don’t care all that much: I’m not sure there’s all that much left in the tank of this series from a conceptual level. This isn’t a series built on the thrill of executing its premise in impressive moments: I would defy even fans of the series to remember specific action sequences that stick in mind, other than a lasting impression of general mayhem. But this fifth instalment feels like it manages, even against all odds, to keep its head above water as something of marginal interest: that’s more than I would have predicted at any point in the series so far.