Imagine an America in which for one night every year, all crime, including murder, is legal. What would you do?

I recently attended a midnight showing of the newest horror film out, The Purge. In the week before its premiere there was a lot of buzz surrounding the movie. It is a unique and intriguing idea for a film, and I was very excited to see if it would live up to its hype. I was hoping it would, since the plot line seemed so promising.

The general focus of the film surrounds the life of a seemingly average, upper class family. A father, a maker and seller of security systems specially built to keep homes safe during this one fateful night every year, and a protective and fairly typical house wife, go about their daily lives living in a very comfortable neighborhood. They have a promiscuous teenage daughter who wears a school girl uniform for the duration of the film and sneaks her unapproved and over aged boyfriend around her house, and a young, for lack of a better word, creepy-looking but innocent son who drives a remote control half-singed Chucky resembling baby doll around the home on a daily basis.

The conflict in the film surrounds the havoc that ensues when the young boy witnesses through the security cameras a black man running about the empty neighborhood streets begging for help. He has an urge to save the man, and quickly disarms the home in order for him to run in for safety. We soon discover that this is a homeless man, and a young group of people who takes advantage of the opportunity the purge grants them each year has planned for him to be their target. Drunk, stumbling, and dressed up in formal attire as well as wearing masks on their faces, this group of crazed young people, anticipated to produce an element of horror in the film, alerts the family that if they do not sacrifice this man to them still alive, they will become their new targets.

The leader of this group, who is the speaker for them and appears unmasked, had the best performance in the film. He was a rare character that was actually convincing, and essentially generated fear in the movie watcher. His performance reminded me of that of the Joker from the Batman movies, as he presents himself as polite and smiley, while also being a psychopathic killer.

At some of the film’s most intense fighting scenes I found the people around me cracking up and cheering at parts. It’s one thing to laugh at the frequent corny and scenes with poor acting, but another to be giggling at the parts that must have been intended to be more serious.

All in all, I believe the idea of an annual purge was a great and unique concept for a film, but the film itself was poorly executed. It was definitely entertaining, but with such a strong idea, it could have been made a lot better. After all, any “horror” picture that causes an entire movie theater audience to laugh at the most climactic parts must be missing some element.