The Purge -review by the Director

 

Release the beast:

In a not to distant future, America is run by the ‘New Founding Fathers.’ A new law is enacted that allows everyone to go fucking nuts one day a year. Nothing is illegal, murder, rape, child molesting, whatever horror you can dream up you can enact onto your fellow man and it’s perfectly legal for 12 hours. It’s called the Purge.

Time to Purge:

It’s purpose is to release all your pent up anger and frustrations by going on a killing spree, vandalism, or the like. Because of the new Purge act crime is at an all time low. Everyone feels it’s psychologically in their best interests to purge. I will discuss my philosophical view of the purge in a bit.
The movie is a thriller. I felt quite uneasy watching this film. It creates a lot of anxiety just watching it.

The plot; a wealthy family with a super duper security system in a well to do neighbor hood are tucked in for the Purge. The family goes about their activities for the next 12 hours, the purge length. Outside the house is monitored by cameras.

The young boy in the Sanders family of four, besides Dad, Mom, and older sister, sees a wounded black man in the street crying for help. He opens the house and lets the guy in. The family freaks out and the guy runs and hides in the house. Before they can do much, there is another incident in the house I won’t spoil. After that a group of privileged rich college age kids come to the house demanding the black man be released to them so they can perform their right of purging on him.

The polite ‘Patrick Bateman’ type leader of the group (Ryhs Wakefield) warns the Sanders  if they don’t give the guy up they will break in and kill them all.

I won’t spoil the movie, but they do end up  turning off the power, making the sanders use flashlights, and breaking in, the thrills continue.

Acting:

Ethan Hawke plays the father James Sanders. He is a seasoned A-list hollywood actor and of course is good in the movie. His wife is played by the beautiful Lena Headey, its a tough role, she does okay, she is very striking so its easy forgive her somewhat rigid performance. Everyone else is good. The Polite Leader of the Purging co-eds, charismatic Ryhs Wakfield plays a great villain. His character is a little thin as is everyones actually. But what he and the other characters symbolism is very much relatable. Which is, what you do throughout this movie. You constantly find yourself thinking, what would I do in this situation?

Gore:

This being a horror movie there is violence. Mostly ungainly visceral fighting, stabbing and shooting. Not a gore fest.

Sex:

Some kissing, nothing really.

Directing:

The movie looks great, the highlight is the use of the door’s peep hole to see the psycho co-eds in creepy masks.

There is a lot of low light flash light stalking well shot.

Good use of security cameras to tell the story and well excited close ups to show emotion, concern and fear of course.

Rating?

Yes see this movie. Its well worth watching. Is it a classic? No way. Will you watch it again? Probably, to enjoy with a date, friend, or if it happens to be on TV.

Philosophical angle:

The invisible ring concept: If you had an invisible ring, a ring that by wearing turned you invisible, would you steal, exact revenge, or engage in voyeurism and rape if you could get away with it? Maybe you would. What if everybody had invisibility rings? It would be chaos. Unless there were ethics, morality, consequences the foundation on which civilization is built. Why is it okay for you to get away with murder when no one else can?

In the movie, the Sanders boy, pretty much fucked everything up by being disobedient to his father and opening the security door into the house. There are two reasons why he may have done this. I think it demonstrates the lazy discipline we see in modern family dynamics. Kids are aloud to question their parents’ authority without much consequence. Which on the one hand might encourage critical thinking skills and debate skills but it also creates a dark side. Kids actually don’t know more than their parents. They need to listen to their parents and teachers. If they refuse to listen to them, they will have to listen to the police and judges. They might need to be locked up with the rest of people who don’t respect civilization’s laws.

Secondly the kid most obviously opened the door to the hurt man because he took pity on him, even though it was dangerous to himself and his family. The families empathic capacity is well demonstrated later in the movie. The sudden realization of ‘what have we become’? I can’t live with myself if this is how I’m going to act.’

The Purge itself has an insane yet utilitarian value to it. It deals with over population, criminals, conflict with races, and basically eliminates the stupid people. How? The first people that start killing each other are the criminals this results in less criminals. The racists begin killing minorities. Minorities fight back, the two kill each other weakening their numbers. The elite set out to purge the homeless from the streets, this results in less homeless people. The young psychopaths that threatened the Sanders were not fit for society. There was nothing lost by eliminating some elitist bastards. Over all, all the killing helps lower the population. The people wise enough not to purge survive and benefit society. The people that engage in the purge, because they are lunatics, hopefully get killed, again removing some of the lunatics from the society.

The Purge teaches you who your friends really are. If you are locked up in a house with people, even if they are family and friends, it’s perfectly legal for them to bash your brains in from behind if they feel inclined. The people who wear a mask and are secretly miserable might go on a killing spree, killing their boss, so don’t be an asshole boss, or other two faced ‘friends’. It’s a great time to kill your spouse or abusive father.

What would you do during a purge, go kill minorities, kill an ex boyfriend, kill cops, or stay home and try to avoid the rampage outside? The intention of the Purge is to eliminate the maladjusted to make life better for the rest of society. Of course no well adjusted society would have a Purge Act.

-The Director.

Battle Royal review by the Director

 

What the fuck kind of school field trip is this?

In this fantasy world a fascist government deals with juvenile disobedience by passing the BR Act. 42 ninth graders are taken to a remote island where their sadistic teacher and the military force them to engage in the ‘Battle Royal’. They have 3 days to kill each other until one stands as the victor.

How the BR works:

Each student has a collar put around their neck. If they refuse to kill each other or there is no winner in three days this happens:

Asian exploding blood, awesome I know.

The kids are of course shocked and terrified but they have little choice. Forced at gun point and terrified from that little demonstration each student is given a bag containing some food and water and a weapon or some item that they may find useful. Some of the kids get a machine gun, others get a fucking useless paper fan or a frying pan, though most get something deadly including poison, a knife, sword, hand gun, sickle, as so on.

Sex:

These are minors so there is no sex or nudity. The girls are wearing semi-short skirts if you are a into statutory rape.

Gore:

Welcome to a gorehound buffet. We get a brutal death every few minutes. It never lets up and it’s explicit. Chopped off heads, multiple shootings, stabbings, and fountains of blood. You won’t be disappointed.

Even though the movie is shocking in nature, kids killing each other and over the top gore, it’s actually a really good movie. Some of the students form alliances, some commit suicide, some go Rambo, some alliances break down.

There is teen romance, there is a constant feeling of innocents coming from these kids. I found them all, though at times stereotypical, engaging. I felt bad for some and I found myself rooting for them to survive.

Two ‘transfer students’ are thrown in the mix. One is a total psychopath and elected to be a part of this BR insanity.

The other was last year’s previous winner. He has experience and seems like the obvious favorite, being older and toughened from his previous BR experience. I won’t spoil how things unfold for him.

Acting:

All the kids do a great job. I couldn’t find anything to be critical of.

The teacher oozed psychosis, well played sir, well played.

Directing:

As with nearly all Asian films I watch their is a clear feeling of perfectionism. Great attention is paid to everything so the film looks great and is comfortable to follow. Of course this flick isn’t overly predictable, you’ll just have to see what happens.

Final Grade:

This is one of the best movies I’ve ever scene. It has heart, terror, visceral gore, a great plot, and an engaging story. Sometimes the teen romance get’s a little over the top but the movie always gets quickly back to the savage battle to prevent it from being cheesy. Some of the kids back stories are hardcore. The villainous kids are scary. The story has a believable feel even though the plot is realistically ridiculous. This is a great flick you will have a fun time watching. It’s pure horror entertainment. If you haven’t seen it, get to it now!

I give it an +A

-The class Director

Breathing Room reviewed by Drunk Rant

Breathing Room

The question of how humans will react in extreme situation of life and death will always be of interest.

The situation is: you awake with no memory of how you got to a room with 13 strangers. It is generally understood that you will embark on a game where the winner lives and the losers die. Clues to help you survive are slowly givin to you. You can’t trust anyone.

The truth is we can all identify with one of the 13. We all react to things in a way that would be similar to how the 13 reacted. How would you handle the situation?
Some of us are leaders, and will always try seek answers.
Some are followers.
Some are independant. Always questioning even the reasonable.
Some are liars. Seeking their own advantage.
Some are what I will label folders. Not even able to cope with the preasure.

What is strange is the idea of who we would want to be vs. who we really are. I think that no one wants to be weak. No one wants to be a liar. But yet, we are. There always is a weak person and a liar. There is always a selfish person and there is alway a leader. You may never really know who you are unless you are put to the test.

There is no escaping the fact that Breathing Room is a version of the SAW movies. And while SAW is one of the greats, Breathing room does have its own ending. Just don’t expect it to match any kind of SAW greatness.

I ask you this: Are we already in a room fighting for our own survival? Has someone already givin us clues and just watching to see how it all unfolds?

The drink of choice for this is everclear from the bottle.

-Drunk Rant