The fifth installment in the successful Purge franchise was released in 2021, three years after the fourth film, The First Purge. The Forever Purge is the latest movie to follow the plot of the twelve-hour period where lawless rule makes up America, with Blumhouse Productions and Michael Bay both involved with the franchise. All crime is legal and cops, medics, and fire-rescue are unavailable to help as cities burn to the ground and populations reduce immensely. The Forever Purge opens with different newsreels playing; one announcer explaining that the NFFA (New Founding Fathers of America) were voted back into office and have reinstated the purge after President Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) abolished it in a previous movie.
Viewers aren’t told what has happened to Roan, but assume the worst now that she’s out of office and the NFFA is back. Newscasters also tell the audience that a rise in white supremacy has begun to surge in America, as well as migrant individuals coming over to experience the American Dream. The film had an original release date of July 2020, but because of the pandemic, it was pushed for a year later, and even still, the topics of white supremacy and dreamers were still extremely relevant when it came out. So, the premise of this film, is right there in the title. An everlasting purge, one that never ends and continues for the entire year, with no consequences for people’s sick actions. Viewers watch as America falls to the hands of extremists in this film, cities tarnished, and people fleeing to the borders of Mexico and Canada.
Out of the five movies with a sixth one on the way, The Forever Purge is the most realistic and the most hair-raising. MoviePedia states that the film received some harsh criticism from reviewers, with complaints about the repetition of politics in the films making it stale. However, that’s the point of the entire franchise. The Purge movies are meant to exploit a corrupt America, scaring viewers in a way that’s not full of supernatural beings, but instead, a fractured government who will wipe out lower-class communities to keep the population down, as well as crime, which is ironic. The Forever Purge does a few things differently than the rest of the movies, and here’s how it sticks out.
It Doesn’t Toe the Line Like the Others
Blumhouse Productions
The upsetting actions that take place in this film, are very much in your face this time around. Through the other movies, racism and the talk of wealth and privilege are discussed, but not nearly to the extreme of what takes place in The Forever Purge. One of the main characters, Dylan Tucker (Josh Lucas) and his family own a successful ranch, and could be described as upper class, doing well for themselves. They have ranch hands that help with the horses, and Kirk, one of the most trusted hands, turns on the family once the original purge is over. Kirk and other cowboys, most likely assumed to be other ranch hands for rich families, tie up the family and Kirk delivers a monologue about what it’s like being broke while the people he works for have everything.
It’s a twisted way of acknowledging the governments lack of care for lower class families and individuals, Kirk not necessarily making his reasoning about race, but for others, it’s exactly that. Through the first twenty-five minutes of the film, a truck rolls through the streets and announces that this group of people, not the NFFA, who are continuing the purge, are “cleansing the streets”, meaning that they were torturing and killing every individual who wasn’t white. To make the connection between white supremacy and this group isn’t difficult to do, seeing as they have the whole “cleansing America” mindset.
The Use of the Border
With the two families fighting together by the middle of the movie, they realize their only option is to cross the border into Mexico for a safe haven. Since America is the only country that participates in the Purge, Mexico and Canada’s borders open for a total of six hours, granting whoever is not participating in the forever purge sanctuary until the government has control over its citizens once again. However, when violence continues to rage on and things get even worse, mass executions and bombings take place, and the two countries shut down the border openings prematurely, and hundreds of people are stuck on the highway, doomed.
The Daily Beast states that the treatment of the border topic in this movie is a jab at the hysteria white nationalists and former President Trump were discussing the entire four years of his presidency. Building a wall in The Purge’s America and then not having a way to escape to find refuge in a different country is one big slap in the face to viewers. It’s one of the most realistic things that could happen if the Purge ever did take place; the horrible thought of being trapped in America because we built a giant wall around us, not having a way out.
The Forever Purge is the most relevant and realistic movies in the franchise because it doesn’t pull its punches. It doesn’t skirt the line of being something it’s not, getting in the face of viewers and forcing them to watch how much destruction a corrupt government can cause. It shows how out of control an event like this could get; the Purge being referred to as a Holiday through each movie, as if it should be celebrated.
