Previously in Mallory Reviews Movies: Things That Actually Happened In The Movie Vampire Academy, A Movie That Is About An Academy For Vampires and Class Is 1000% Percent Better Than The Graduate And You Should Watch It Instead.
Of course The Purge II: Anarchy was going to be better than The Purge. “Fairly straightforward home invasion movie with psychopaths” doesn’t hold a purging CANDLE to “Escape From L.A. with machetes and roving machine gun trucks.” It took them a single calendar year to write, shoot, edit and release The Purge II: Anarchy, which is incredible, and I can only hope is the beginning of an annual summer tradition. I want to see The Purge: Revolution, followed by The Purge: The Hallowing, followed by The Purge: Purgatory: Hell On Earth. It is a perfect concept: one night a year, everyone in the world becomes a horrible murderer.
“But how is the Purge legally enforceable–”
“Wouldn’t the vast, vast majority of people just stay inside and not commit any crimes at all–”
“Why aren’t more people stealing cars and credit cards and whatnot, why is everyone bludgeoning strangers to death with tire chains–”
No. Stop it. Every year for one night everyone in the world becomes a horrible murderer. You can’t see The Purge with an attitude like that, man. And I don’t want you to tell me how The Purge is a perfect horror movie for our anxious, post-9/11 society, or gun culture, or Palestine, or that Santa Barbara guy, or anything else. The Purge II: Anarchy is a perfect movie for people who want to see a bunch of people try to murder each other for no good reason. Get busy purgin’ or get busy dying.
Some Stray Purging Thoughts
9. No, I haven’t seen Snowpiercer yet. I’m going to. It sounds really good. Or Boyhood. Look, I want people to think I’m smart just as much as the next blogger plagued with imposter syndrome, but I’m a simple woman, and what I really want most of the time to see a lot of people running around LA wearing Day of the Dead masks and brandishing giant, giant knives on skateboards.
8. Honestly, not enough people died in this movie. I don’t even mean the main characters, although I can think of two I would have really, really liked to have seen bite it at some point. I mean there weren’t enough ESTABLISHING THE TONE murders, where the main characters see someone brave or strong or armed to the teeth get really savagely taken out so they realize this year is even more serious than years past.
I mean, you see a guy like this roaming around in the back of a semi, you expect to see him murder a lot of people, right? Well, he only murdered some. It sucked.
7. Speaking of which — most of the Purgers are driving armored vehicles with mounted assault rifles (and in one very memorable instance, a dune buggy with a flamethrower attached to it), or at the VERY LEAST carrying machine guns and wearing bulletproof vests, except for ONE GUY whose only protection is a shoddily put-together doll’s mask, a skateboard, and a machete. THAT’S IT. He skateboards lazily throughout the entire movie, and no one shoots him even once, even though he is almost entirely defenseless against anything that’s not a dense hedgemaze. He’s just the slowly-rolling knife guy, and I love him. In my mind, his name is Timothy, and he’s getting his associate’s degree at Loyola Marymount.
6. The grandfather of one of the main characters slips away before the Purge starts, because he’s sold himself as a human target to a wealthy family in order to ensure his children’s well-being, so you know this movie has some pretty salient points to make about class warfare (the classes are at literal war with each other). Is there anything better than movie Rich People? They’re always wearing their school blazers and prep-school pins, even if they’re thirty years old, and the women are always dressed like Emily Gilmore. In my opinion, that is a great choice, but I really like to have things spelled out for me. Your mileage may etc.
This might be giving the Purgemakers a lot of credit they don’t deserve, but the marketing made it seem like most of the danger, Purge-wise, was going to be coming from roving bands of urban youths when it turns out that THE GOVERNMENT is behind most of the Purging (“You people just weren’t killing each other enough!”) and also rich people host Taken-style auctions on various lots of captured poor people, then hunt them for sport in a sculpture garden. Oh my God, and they keep fist-bumping each other, and the women are all in gowns and furs and the men are all in Downton Abbey-era hunting tweeds, because they’re hunting The Most Dangerous Game.
5. Matt Saracen from Friday Night Lights and, apparently, his wife in real life, play the sort of bougie white people one hopes either never to encounter or never to become, depending on one’s own ethnic situation. He wears a puffy vest and is strategically useless; she has very fussy bangs and does nothing but snipe at him at the worst possible time.
4. I wish there had been just one scene of some guy alone in his super-armored basement, gleefully committing securities fraud with impunity for twelve hours, but I guess you can’t have everything.
3. Frank Grillo plays basically The Punisher/Snake Plissken, which is incredible, and if Matt Saracen &co. represent white folks at our worst, Frank represents us at our imaginary best: he looks amazing in a trench coat, somehow his pompadour gets better with each fresh coating of blood, and he doesn’t have any feelings except for Revenge and Being In Charge Of The Situation and Get Down, You’re Going To Get Us All Killed.
2. This movie made me a sexist, because I am highly suggestible and also because I am a sucker for a Loner Who Walks Alone Gets Suckered Into Helping People narrative. I don’t care how overused it is, the second I see someone onscreen with a grizzled jaw and pain behind their silent eyes, I’m ready to offer them my sword and sit at their feet in quiet awe. So every time one of the NOISY, NO-SELF-PRESERVATION-INSTINCT-HAVING women questioned Frank Grillo’s plan, or whispered loudly “WHAT ARE YOU DOING” as he tried to sneak them past a flotilla of eye-stabbers, I was ready for him to cut them loose and leave them to die. But he didn’t, which was pretty nice of him.
1. When Matt Saracen gets shot — this is a movie about a world where crime is legal for one night, people get shot in this movie and I refuse to apologize for talking about it — I said loudly to my companion, “Looks like it’s Friday Night Lights out for him,” and I have said it to myself several times thereafter, and I still think it is the funniest off-the-cuff remark I have ever made.
Tags: anarchy, dystopia, loners, mallory reviews movies, movies, the best kind of white people, the purge, the purge II: anarchy, the worst kind of white people
Related Posts
Class Is 1000% Percent Better Than The Graduate And You Should Watch It Instead
Your Experimental Father’s Day Movie Marathon
“Just a Doll in Dungarees”: Revisiting Gidget
Your Terrifying Mother’s Day Movie Marathon
Seventeen Things You Didn’t Know About The X-Men Series
How To Watch Silent Movies (If You Want To)
“that santa barbara guy”
MY SENSITIVE, NUANCED TAKE ON THE SERIOUS ISSUES PLAGUING OUR MODERN SOCIETY
I clicked on the “best kind of white people” tag and this was the only article with that tag, which says a lot about white people.
we’re not at our best in groups
Your words about killing and white people are killing me. And probably some other white people.
I imagine the “worst kind of white people” tag is going to get a lot more exercise.
It’s every single other article on the Internet.
Also most comment sections.
If the purge was an actual thing and all crime was legal again I think I’d just steal a bunch of really nice stuff. And you know, knife a couple of people, or whatever.
oh god i would do horrible horrible things
I like the insinuation that the only thing keeping us all from becoming serial killers is “lack of specific permission.”
That being said I’d basically try to become a Batman Villain before being accidentally shot in the head by like, a toddler.
people don’t have moral codes they only keep from torturing and murdering because it’s illegal, silly
(though there have been times and people that have suggested to me that the only reason I haven’t commited SOME crimes is that the prison time isn’t worth it to me)
(there sure as hell are some people who are only alive today because murdering them wasn’t worth the court case)
My mother-in-law and I have a comedy routine. When her son, my husband, does something super annoying, I ask her why didn’t just pinch off his little head as an infant when she had the chance. She answers, “I didn’t want to do the jail time.”
Y’all, this woman is as law-abiding as they come, white, mid-western, conventional, and … wait for it … slightly retarded / simple-minded. It’s *who she is* that cracks up my husband every time she says her line.
“I like the insinuation that the only thing keeping us all from becoming serial killers is “lack of specific permission.”
I so wish I hadn’t heard it on way more than one occasion, as an atheist being told I have no morals because I have no god, yet, despite having no (fear of) god, I am yet to start murdering and raping and pillaging. Go figure.
But yeah, sadly, this is actually a (valid in certain eyes) assumption – only thing that stops us from unimaginable crime sprees is outside forces and the fear of punishment.
And that was way too serious, for which I apologise. 😉
Mallory, this *is* the funniest off-the-cuff remark I’ve ever heard 😉 (even if I’ve never seen Friday Nights Something else;))
I’ve always taken that argument as a red flag to never be alone with that person
Can’t even comprehend the notion of not only being held back from a pedophiliac killing spree by immediate fear of massive retribution, huh, sure I’ll let you crash on my couch
But pedophiliac killing sprees are still illegal, right? Then I’m totally fine on your couch, totally fine. Don’t you worry a bit! Oh, just a couple of questions before you turn in for the night… should I use the downstairs bathroom? Great, thanks. Also, one more thing, sorry, where do you keep your knives?
i’m not saying i’d finally set all those people on fire but
Y’know what’s weird is I specifically remember saying of several different people just this week “I WILL SET [HIM/HER/THEM] ON FIIIIIIIIRE” but now I can’t even remember who any of them are or what they did, which just goes to show you.
What does it go to show you? That I’ll have to start keeping a list when Purge Night legislation passes, I guess.
Just use the Executioner’s Song from the Mikado to keep everything straight, it was expected to be updated with the times anyway.
takes out pad and pen, mutters under breath The… Whelk… comma… gave me Mikado earworm comma 21 July.
watch out Elsa/Emily’s gonna get you during the next purge!!!!!!
I feel like it’s all really about panic when called on to perform. Like, at the start of the year they all totally had great ideas for how they were gonna steal the Hope Diamond and sell nukes to Iran and unpasteurized milk to Walmart, but they put it off, and put it off, and then before they know it purgemas is on top of them and oh crap I didn’t do any preparation at all better just run out and shoot someone, I guess
Every single American
Like hypothetically government opposition is an obstacle to my biting off my neighborhood as its own little rogue state with me as deranged nuclear godking Kim Jong Il-style or making a smintillion dollars scamming corporations, but if it was anywhere close to the biggest one it really wouldn’t be one, y’know?
Logistics
I feel like the lethargy and interia the Internet creates in me is a greater obstacle to me committing crimes than any law.
After reading this thread, I just sat here for a while thinking “What’s a really COOL crime I’d like to commit???” and couldn’t think of anything good. In a real purge situation, I’d for sure be killed during this lengthy waffling – I wouldn’t even see it coming.
Honest to God, I would probably just illegally download the WICKED soundtrack before getting hacked apart by roving psychos whose parents instilled a good work ethic in them.
I would download all my favorite HBO shows and marathon them all in my panic room drinking Mexican moonshine with Cuban cigars. Best. Purge. Ever.
I would cower in my root cellar and hope no one had any SERIOUS grudges against me. I like nice things, but I’m also not that nice a person and I have very high risk-aversion, so I really couldn’t take the chance of being out there in case people are targeting me, e.g. the lady who pulled her car up too far into the crosswalk and whom I glared at the entire time I was crossing the street, prompting her to flip me off.
YEP THIS. There is a creepy trap door in the closet of my ground floor apartment and I have no doubt I would hide down there until all this is over because someone, somewhere will just kill the hell out of me if I even stood the chance of being visible.
I commend your bravery. If my choices were “hide in creepy closet trap door” or “get murdered by Purge lunatics,” I think I would take my chances with the lunatics.
Yeah, I would kind of like to imagine myself as a person who is brave enough to go commit some exciting but noble crimes — like, I’d organize a group of people to commit some Robin-Hood-style theft from the super-wealthy! Or beat up Rick Perry! — but realistically I would spend the whole day under the bed with all the lights turned out and the blinds closed.
I feel like all I would do is steal a bunch of priceless art and first edition books and really nice wine. Which would be pretty easy since all the rich people are out hunting the poors. But I AM pretty lazy and murdering a bunch of people seems like a hassle, so.
Crime idea! Occupy and subsequently commandeer property and ensure your claim through muuuuuuurder just like history! MAKE THE SCULPTURE GARDEN YOUR OWN
My crime spree would be of the “petty” variety. Key people’s cars, puncture tires, light a bag of dog poop on fire & ring the doorbell, those types of silly crimes.
The WORST thing I could think of doing is setting my neighbor’s lawn on fire, but only because it is solid sticker plants and those need to be killed with fire as they are spreading into my yard.
smash car windows with baseball bats!!
I liked when the dopey purging couple at the beginning is walking around with their guns, ready to start their ~wild night~ and do the little “Hello, Fellow Purger!” nod to the semi truck and promptly get machine-gunned to pieces.
These movies appeal to my basest emotional cues (rich people BAD! hissssss) and that is why I love them.
I now feel like I have seen the best parts of the movie, with commentary, and no longer need to see the actual movie. THANK YOU.
“No, I haven’t seen Snowpiercer yet. I’m going to. It sounds really good. . . . Look, I want people to think I’m smart just as much as the next blogger plagued with imposter syndrome”
No fear! It’s fun and violent and gets major points in my book for being set on a self-sufficient train, but it’s getting an undeserved rep as a serious movie. It’s emphatically not serious, despite its Award Winning Cast and Famous Foreign Director. Its observations on the class war are trite and easy to ignore. Go see it in the same spirit you saw The Purge II: Anarchy.
It’s like the Hunger Games, but on a train. That’s kind of all you need to know.
plus a carp
Side note, I saw this movie with a large group of people including one man who made not one, not two, but THREE snide comments about Octavia Spencer’s weight during the film:
(when we first see her) “How did she manage to stay fat when everyone’s starving?”
(after Chris Evans says it’s too dangerous for her to do something – this is not a spoiler, it is in the beginning of the movie) “Plus you’re fat.”
(and later) “How are you so fat.”
RAAAAAAAAGE
RAGE
RAGE
I hope you know where to find that fat-talkin’ guy come Purge Night. Sommmmmmmebody has a lesson to learn!
And by “lesson,” I mean “being set on fire” and by “learn,” I mean “burn.” And by “somebody,” I mean “SHUT IT, MISTER, SHUT YOUR FAT-TALKIN’ MOUTH OR I WILL SHUT IT FOR YOU.”
And by “Shut it for you,” I mean “SET IT AFLAME.”
KILL HIM!!!
What are you waiting for, that “special” time of the year?
Agreed, it’s smart, but also gleefully nonsensical.
It’s based on a comic! It’s got silly nonsense! It is the best of what movies-based-on-comics can be.
(The scene with the blonde girl from that one thing singing at the piano? CAMPTASTIC.)
No it’s terrible except for Tilda Swinton as Ayn Rand.
C’mon, it has an AXE FIGHT. Who doesn’t like axe fights?
WITH FISH
The Purge: The Binge
The Splurge: Every year strangers force you to buy luxury goods and services you might not otherwise have bought.
The Merge: Every year, all Americans must get in their cars and attempt to get onto Interstate 90 all at once.
This would look basically the same as the movie we got, mind
The Verge: Once a year everyone has to take their political and personal beliefs to the extreme. Eat what you kill; wear only what you make; vaccinate everyone you can touch; never flush the toilet even if “it’s” brown; etc.
The Glurge: Every year, all Americans are required to participate in email chains about the True Meaning of Friendship and to watch 24 hours of Upworthy videos.
The Surge: Every year, all Americans must go to the beach and ride gnarly waves
The Urge: America is treated to a free concert by veteran ska-punk outfit The Urge.
The Red Bad of Curge: Every year, all Americans have to participate in violent Civil War reenactments, and get teased mercilessly the rest of the year if they run away
The Dirge: Every year, all Americans must spend one day wearing all black and walking slowly as bagpipe music is piped into the streets.
The Curves: for one day the curves are in all the wrong places.
Yeah, someone should have at least stolen a lot of lottery scratch cards and some beer and pretzels! Apparently the license to murder was misinterpreted so that most people in this movie felt like they were required to murder. That’s just what some scripts do, I guess, and it’s so sad.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch— my neighbors, their silence, their scarcity— things are getting worrisome. I’m gonna just go finish working on some incendiary devices and make sure that my bouncing Betty’s are tuned up because volume, volume, volume.
It’s the American way.
Toodles.
Shout out to LMU! The skateboard analysis was phenomenal. What if Tim had a spin off movie which was shot like the Blair Witch Project? I’d watch that.
Ugh. Matt Saracen. Your face is so beautiful and perfect. Never change. Never grow old. Never die.
“Even though he is almost entirely defenseless against anything that’s not a dense hedgemaze.”
I have no words.
<3
I feel like it takes a lot of time/money to acquire machine guns and armored cars, right? Don’t your neighbors get weirded out when you start planning for The Purge several months in advance? Like, “Geez, the Waltons next door are really into Purging, like a little TOO into Purging, let’s not invite them over for dinner anymore.”
In downtown LA maybe but I’ve lived in towns where that wasn’t unusual and we didn’t even HAVE a Purge
An armored HUMVEE in every driveway and a chicken in every pot. America.
Snake Plissken made me think of Solid Snake, and now I just wish/hope that there was a scene in this movie where people were hiding and ambushing each other in cardboard boxes.
I only accept “The Purge: Purgatory” if it’s pronounced “purge-a-tory!”
Also EVERY TIME I see these trailers a dark voice in the back of my head whispers “I would wreck an anthrpologie”
Ooooh, I would SO wreck an Anthropologie! My god, that is exactly the crime I would do!
“I only accept “The Purge: Purgatory” if it’s pronounced ‘purge-a-tory!'”
God damn it I was racing to the comment section just to say that. I am sending you BEGRUDGING ADMIRATION.
No seriously, that really is the best off-the-cuffer ever.
It is pretty great. I can only hope it was accompanied by CSI Miami-style putting on of sunglasses.
So, my idea of Purging is hitting up the off-brand convenience store down the street, stealing all of their scratch-offs, grabbing some Dove Bars and Diet Dr P on my way out the door, and settling in for a night of scratchin’ and winnin’ while watching other assholes kill each other on CNN.
And somehow CNN would make it controversial.
Looks like it’s Friday Night Lights out for him
I was quietly chuckling to myself throughout this, but I completely lost it at this. Just gone–high-pitched, shrieking giggles that alarmed my mom and everyone else around me. You’re a gift, Mallory.
Frank Grillo, though. Unf. I guess bloody pompadours are what do it for me…?
right? This movie made me straight for like, six hours.
A powerful pompadour, indeed.
In this movie’s universe, does the Purge happen in Canada? And if so, how have no Purgers iced Stephen Harper?
The Canadian version of The Purge would just be one night of people poking Galen Weston with a stick and snarking about the inauthenticity of his ‘wagyu’ burgers.
I’d like to think that Canada wouldn’t have the Purge, but would carry on our tradition of offering refuge to draft dodgers, and give sanctuary to Purge dodgers. But if there were a chance of offing Harper, I’d be in in a heartbeat.
If I was in a Purge, I’d probably just shoplift a bunch of clothes.
Actually, what I’d really want to do is somehow acquire an apartment. I don’t *really* want to kill anyone, but San Francisco real estate might require it. Maybe I’d just wait til the very end of the Purge, then go see who got murdered and squat in their house??
I admire your strategic thinking.
Mallory, how can you joke about adorable Matt Saracen from Friday Night Lights getting shot? You’re not . . . not . . . a Tim Riggins fan, are you? I may have to stop idolizing you, if so.
(Seriously, though, that is one of the best off-the-cuff jokes ever.)
After lurking at the Toast for quite a long time I just have to tell you how much I love to see that I’m not the only one who approach humanity with both love (don’t mistreat people) and hate (Kill Them. Kill them all.). You don’t have to be sentimental to be decent.
(Also, in a Purge, I would kill a neighbour. I wouldn’t have to leave my flat and there is a perfect target in the house opposite mine.)
And what makes you think you would not also be a target? This 5 year old “im invincible’ mentality of millenials is amazing.
I’m not saying the highlight of my day is Frank Grillo’s propensity to post slightly-beat-up looking selfies on instagram but I have also mentally renamed it “hotdadstagram” and i’m not even sorry
OK, but Snowpiercer has a night-vision axe-fight on a train – don’t go in thinking it’s going to be overly erudite & classy.
Mallory, #4 is absolutely perfect because it’s what I didn’t understand about the first movie when my sister described it to me. “Wait, is credit card fraud legal? Can you sell your Adderall on Craigslist for one night?” I too, am really looking forward to The Purge/White Collar crossover.
Remember that in this scenario there would be a whole lot of vendetta from family members and friends of the purged seeking revenge the next day, while the emotional and physical reprecussions of one purge would take years to heal. Also if emergency services are down and major cities burnt to the ground, how the hell would society continue after just one purge?