The Purge (2013)

The funny thing about The Purge, this original movie that gave rise to a series of sequels and a two-season tv series, is that the elaborate concept - that the US Government holds an annual event called "The Purge" in which a twelve-hour moratorium is placed upon all crimes (including the crime of hacking your neighbours to pieces) - has no great bearing on what is essentially a messy, repetitive b-grade home invasion thriller - like being told that in the world beyond the brownstone in David Fincher's Panic Room or outside the house in Haneke's Funny Games there is a politics.

★★☆☆☆

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The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

This is like a grown-up, grubby, gloss-free version of the Hunger Games but with no-one famous in it, and no budget, and not much reason to care who out of its character ensemble will survive, so it is surprising to read that this second movie in the series is considered a great improvement upon the first movie which must have been an especially cliche-riddled, predictable sci-fi horror, I presume also centred around an annual 12-hour event, The Purge, that invites people to participate in a population-culling crime spree.

★★☆☆☆

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