Review by: Jay Andrews-Tracy
The First Purge is a prequel to the first purge movie. I know, it’s confusing, it confuses me too. But that is what it is. This movie is not that great, and not all that terrible at the same time, is that at all possible? I think it is.
The movie sets the initial test grounds for the annual purge. The New Founding Fathers of America wanted to find a way to try to control the population. The movie sets before the original Purge movie, it leads up to the original, and gives sort of a story behind how the annual Purge came about. The film definitely has a political bent to it, also the movies are generally released on July 4th. Dr. Updale (Marisa Tomei) is a scientist who helped develop the experiment.
Citizens are offered $5,000 to stay on Staten Island in order for The First Purge to take place. The movie centers around a group of citizens: Nya (Lex Scott Davis), her ex boyfriend Dmitri (Y’lan Noel) a big time drug dealer and gangster, and Nya’s brother Isaiah (Joivan Wade).
This movie is stylistically similar to the other movies. Anything goes for 24 hours, killings, stealing, murder, whatever you can come up with. The concept of this movie is a good idea, I just wish they would have done more with it, to give us a better plot, or at least more of a plot. The movie is written by James DeMonaco who wrote the first 3 purge movies, and directed by Gerard McMurray.
There is plenty of action in this movie, I would not say it is a horror movie but some people had classified it as such. I do believe there is a lot of action, and suspense in it. The cheesiest part of the movie is one of the villains name is Skeletor (Rotimi Paul). I think they could have come up with something a little bit more original.
The music was composed by Kevin Lax. The soundtrack consists of mostly rap music, which fits the movie perfectly. The budget of the movie was $13,000,000 and the movie grossed $69,086,325. You know with the type of money this movie made there will sure be another sequel to the series.