The First Purge (2018)
The First Purge is the fourth film released in the Purge franchise – yet it is the first film chronologically.
It had been a while since I had seen the previous three entries in The Purge franchise. It allowed me to come to The First Purge with a bit of an open mind.
The First Purge follows America’s third political party, the New Founding Fathers of America, comes to power and conducts an experiment: no laws for 12 hours on Staten Island. No one has to stay on the island, but $5,000 is given to anyone who does.
This was a bit of a strong set up. We were finally going to be seeing something of what lead to The Purge becoming a national holiday. This was our glimpse into the ‘experiment’ that kicked everything off.
The film follows Dmitri (the local kingpin on Staten Island), Nya and her brother Isaiah, and some members of the New Founding Fathers.
The film did a really good job with each of the various storylines. There were some that felt a little lacking (the New Founding Fathers) compared to the strong storylines of Dmitri and Nya.
I understand that ultimately we know where the story is going to go. But the motivations of The New Founding Fathers could have been a bit more fleshed out.
The addition of the contact lenses for the participants was very welcome. It added a new aspect of the Purge mythos that we had never seen in the previous three entires. However, that is something that could feel a little out of place for others. Something that was never really addressed in the film was the various colors of the contacts.
However with much discussion, the Mrs. and I were able to come up with a hypothetical theory regarding those different colors. Each of the different colors represents a different level of what The New Founding Fathers expected from that participant. Blue is the innocent and least active in the experiment. All the way to the Purple that is displayed by Skeletor, who is one of the most active participants of this experiment.
This one part of the mythos would have been nice to see in the past installments. It added a bit of layers and terror. Plus the visual of the contacts was very striking.
Apart from the New Founding Fathers, the other characters were all strong and unique. For myself, I found myself caring about what would happen to Dmitri, Nya, and Isaiah. By the end of the film, it had showed us how The Purge had started as well as how the Resistance may have started as well.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
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