This time around, most of the creative teams just focused on figuring out how to get a first person perspective and then forgot to give us an interesting story.
In an alternate universe very much like our own, few people have ever heard of Jason Voorhees but everybody knows horribly burned summer camp killer Cropsy!
The film's narrative itself slowly adopts a hallucinogenic style, with long silences, slow-motion sequences, mind-bending fast-cut psychedelic imagery and then suddenly the medium becomes the message.
If you were on the fence about sticking with this show because you thought it was poorly written and you didn't care about any of the characters, this isn't going to be the episode to win you over.
Actually, the major point of the episode for me is the masked ball everyone attends, which gives Rebekah a chance to shine as a blonde ice queen in shimmering black.
Peter Strickland has crafted a love letter to cinema itself, specifically to the Italian giallo cinema of the 70s -- the world of Argento, Bava, Fulci, and more.
All in all, The Purge is a problematic film, wearing its politics on its sleeve and embracing nearly every cliché imaginable with the standard home invasion scenario.
This is a darkly fascinating and original story that doesn’t end well for anyone involved, but it has a lot of heart. It's good to see Jen and Sylvia Soska get a break and keep moving upward and onward.
On paper, it sounds like any number of such films that flourished in the late 70’s-early-80’s slasher boom. In execution, there’s a reason why it’s still remembered today.
It's the kind of thematic resonance that was missing from the last two episodes and helps to provide a bit more gravity without overtly sacrificing the family-friendliness.
