After the events happened in the third film about The Purge, The Purge: Election Year (2016), the movie series were expected to be finished in the form of a trilogy. Besides that, the TV Mini-Series After the Purge were announced. And now, we have known that the annual Purge will be back to the big screen with this fourth movie, that will actually work as a prequel.
The Purge: The Island (2018) will focus on the events that lead up to the very first Purge, as it has been stated by the people responsible for the film. The movie is being produced by Blumhouse Productions. James DeMonaco, the creator, writer, and director of the first three movies has decided this time not to be behind the cameras and left that duty to young filmmaker Gerard McMurray. Although DeMonaco is the author of the script and will have a position as producer.
It is unsure if Frank Grillo, the star of The Purge: Anarchy (2014) and The Purge: Election Year (2016), will be back to reprise his role or any related one. He has publicly stated that he would only return if the script is really good and James DeMonaco will have something to do with the movie.
In a recent interview with James DeMonaco, he discussed how reality overcame fiction once again when president Donald Trump used the slogan from the film “Make America Great Again” for his own presidential campaign. DeMonaco said “Oh, God! We came up with that first. He stole a line from this grotesque conceit, you know? I wish we were in a different society where it felt like we were watching Soylent Green (1973), completely ridiculous. That’s what you hope, and it’s sad that there is any kind of reflection on society. I always see pictures of Trump [paired with] pictures of The Purge movies”.
About the upcoming TV Series, DeMonaco said “The movies are more like events. In the TV show, I think we’re slowing it down, and we’re using this flashback structure to enter into the non-Purge lives of these people. We’re going back six months or two years or into their childhood to see some things that might’ve fed into their decision-making on this particular Purge. The long form is actually allowing it to become more of a character study, which is kind of cool, instead of a singular event of surviving the night. We have a black female lead. We have a young Puerto Rican brother and sister. We have an Asian character. It’s opening [the story] up, in a way. Ten hours is allowing us to get deeper into character, and deeper into why people would actually consider violence as an option. We’ll see it next year”.
Well, it seems like The Purge is not going to abandon us anytime soon. And it is getting more acid towards the current political and social situation of American and the world nowadays. Because we humans made this world a not easy place to live in, and things are going to worse. But perhaps what seem to be mere pieces of entertainment, a little action horror film, can open our eyes and finally make us react against all the injustice and nonsense surrounding us.
