The Purge: Election Year

More interesting than most popcorn thrillers.

The Purge: Election Year feels like a franchise that is running out of ideas.

DeMonaco serves up plenty of chases, shoot-outs and gory killings but, amid all the mayhem, he soon loses sight of the political subtext.

The result is a roiling casserole of bad-taste jolts - lynching trees, parricidal Lolitas, "murder tourism", gallows gags about racist mobs - but each one pulls its weight and makes its point.

The premise of The Purge never stopped being a nifty high concept. But this loses narrative interest after about 10 minutes.

Election Year is not exactly subtle, but it is stirring to see a marquee film have a crack at America's violent malaise.

Fun Horror Action but AWFUL Villain characters that annoy you through the entire runtime.

Whether DeMonaco is visualizing a reflection of our current condition or providing a cautionary tale, his dependency on his high-minded message ultimately drowns out the drama.

DeMonaco's movie provides his audience with the very thing the movie seems to condemn: mindless, uninhibited aggression.

Election Year might actually be the most interesting of the three films, it can't really escape from its heavy-handed storytelling.