Reliving Election Night 2016 with The Purge: Election Year
I recall election night 2016 vividly. Not expecting any significant surprises, I decided to have some fun with the evening. After starting with Captain America: The First Avenger (because, of course, Captain America), I moved on to the main event: The Purge: Election Year.
Under normal circumstances, that would have been the highlight of my night: a fittingly ironic horror movie for the occasion. However, as the night progressed and the election results rolled in, the entire experience left a sour taste in my mouth. It transformed from a hilarious romp to something that felt all too real. Suddenly, the entire concept of the movie wasn’t amusing anymore.
The Purge Movies: A Reflection of American Culture
In a way, that’s the power and unique position of The Purge movies in popular culture. Despite their election night boost, they’ve always held a precarious spot in American culture: part grimdark fantasy of a society gone awry, and part prophetic doom-saying that only the very best episodes of The Twilight Zone have managed to achieve.
The first film had an incredible premise but was wasted on a fairly standard home invasion flick: good actors, decent production, solid-enough writing, but never reaching its full potential. The second was one of the most disjointed sequels I can recall coming out of Hollywood (and that’s saying something). It superficially explored half a dozen sequel-worthy plots in a single film, ranging from subsidized purging, anti-purging, revenge-purging, selling out to wealthy (and undoubtedly safe) purgers, purge auctions, and so on.
Election Year: The Purge Movie That Got It Right
Election Year is the one that finally nailed the formula: drawing from the successes of the previous two movies, focusing on a primary storyline, and using subplots more as set pieces than as actual extended narrative threads. Ultimately, The Purge: Election Year was as fine a piece of satire as one could hope for from such a commercial industry and in a genre that, while perfectly suited for such films, rarely rises above its barebones productions.
It was a given that the studio responsible for the franchise would continue producing these films even before Trump took office; they were far too popular (not to mention profitable) to do otherwise. However, after election night 2016, the world seemed more ready for the franchise than ever before. With Trump’s proposed re-election slogan being the third movie’s tagline — “keep America great” — it was a match made in… well, not Heaven, that’s for sure.
The First Purge: A Prequel That Hits Close to Home
The first teaser trailer for the latest Purge Movie, a prequel set during the very first Purge in the franchise’s loosely structured timeline, played up this contemporary political connection. Released during Trump’s State of the Union address and styled like a genuine Republican political ad, it touches so unnervingly on the underlying hatred and pettiness of the current political climate that it’s genuinely difficult to remember that it is ultimately fiction. And that final shot, a red Trump hat with white letters reading “The First Purge.”
This time, I think I’m ready for it.
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