Since the beginning, The Purge series has been a rather deliberate and blatant parody of our government. And as the chasm that separates the rich from everyone else widens, so do The Purge movies become more obvious with their message. The Purge 3: Election Year appears to be following the trend with a trailer that shows some in-your-face political satire.
Behind all the bloodshed and gore, The Purge movies are attempting to be a voice for the less fortunate. And relative to the economy of the United States, the number of less fortunate is increasing exponentially. Government officials come and go, and any that openly convey a message of change turn out to be either deceptive or inept with their promises.
Thus The Purge films continue, like a cinematic therapy for the proverbially stranded of our populace. For some, the message is more realistic. Certain locales in our fair country seemingly Purge every other night of the week. Other cities slowly drain the blood from their victims with ever increasing costs and ever decreasing revenues. So the bloodshed portrayed in our trailer may be fake, but it is a violent metaphor for a situation that is all-too-real.
But in the end, do we really need another Purge film? What is this film telling us that we don't already know? Is this just an elaborate Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton PSA veiled behind bloodstained masks of fiction? Or is this something much simpler than elaborate propaganda, and merely an attempt to cash in on a formula that audiences have latched onto at a healthy enough pace that to deny it a franchise would be careless of the studio big wigs that are funding the movie that whispers to end their reign of economic terror, yet flawlessly distracts like the great colosseum of Rome?
Or is to sit here and question the endgame of this franchise and its clear intent on selling out on itself just pandering on a soap box that nobody wants to hear? Well, I don't blame you. We come here for horror reviews. And what this trailer says is that we are getting another film in the franchise that is adding a slight wrinkle to what is becoming a predictable formula. I can find entertainment value in most anything with a decent budget and an action-filled plot, but that doesn't mean the value is high or that I'm proud of my ability to be easily distracted.