A young couple works to survive on the streets after their car breaks down right as the annual purge commences.
A patchy but proficient enough action movie, The Purge: Anarchy is a welcome expansion of the first film's concept, and shrewdly fills a void as one of the few adult-orientated action films in the family-friendly summer schedule.
The politics are surprisingly complex, in the way that a jigsaw puzzle missing its biggest pieces is hard to solve.
For Universal, the franchise is a low-risk work-in-progress, but DeMonaco is improving as a shotmaker: this entry just about plays, albeit on the level of a straight-to-DVD item or TV pilot.
The originality and suspense have been used up long before the final reel, but one guesses this is a franchise that will run and run.
“No stars, more deaths!” would be an apt tagline for a sequel that delivers plenty of bang for your buck but could have done with being a touch more, well, anarchic.
Gleeful depictions of violent deaths rub shoulders with sledgehammer social commentary about this being an extreme expression of class warfare in a B-movie bloodbath that is tensely made but pretty vile.
If you can swallow the sinister logic, the picture is a nastily efficient thriller with some tense set-pieces and queasy revelations.
Class-war potshots distract attention from this follow-up's shaky plot, but it still resembles an exploitation film.
Interview: producer Jason Blum
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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