31 Days of Horror is the theme that I’ve consistently been good at. I typically try to write about one horror movie every day during October. With all my other themes, I’m lucky to talk about more than a handful of films in the month, but I usually nail my horror month.

Obviously, that hasn’t been the case this month. I’ve just been busy, I guess. And I had gotten out of the habit of writing about movies like that. Or something. Actually, I’ve had a lot of other writing duties to attend to. I’ve had a lot of movies to watch for Cinema Sentries, most of which haven’t been horror films.  

I’m now in the middle of watching the Nightmare on Elm Street series, and I will write about that, but since I will be reviewing the entire set, I don’t feel like talking about each movie (except last week when I made the first film my Friday Night Horror movie, and possibly this coming Friday when I may do the same for one of the later films.)

So here we are. I’ve now seen four films in the Purge franchise, and frankly I’ve not loved any of them (you can read my review of the first three here). I unintentionally skipped the fourth film in the series, The First Purge (2018), and landed on this one, the fifth in the series.

At the end of The Purge: Election Year, a new President was elected who promised to end the annual Purges for good. Well, naturally this sequel isn’t going to be set in a land without Purges, so it begins some eight years later with it being reinstated. And as the title suggests, some really committed racist assholes decide that one 12 hour period in which all crime (including murder) is allowed just isn’t enough. The Purge needs to last forever. Or at least until they can get rid of everyone that doesn’t look like them.

The undertone of the entire series is that The Purge was created by rich white supremacists, and so this film isn’t exactly coming up with a new idea. But there are a few interesting things to be found.

We begin on a Texas ranch that hires a number of Mexican immigrants. The owner of the place (played by Will Patton – always great) is a decent dude. He treats his workers well. He even gives them money on Purge night so they can buy some protection (though he does not offer to let them stay on his fortified compound.) Apparently, there are places where those who are not rich and white can find shelter for Purge night (for a price). That’s an interesting idea.

Purge Night goes by pretty smoothly, but then morning comes and they are still Purging. Our Mexican heroes head back to the ranch and wind up teaming up with the rich white guys that run it.  One of them is the type of racist who doesn’t think he’s racist, but just thinks that everybody “ought to stick with their own kind.” Naturally, he’ll learn the error of his ways by film’s end.

Our heroes load into a semi-truck and head to the border. The film seems to think it is really clever by having a group of rich white dudes try to cross into Mexico for safety. The film is not all that clever in any of its parts. But it is more or less thrilling. The action scenes are well staged and I was entertained.  That’s really all I need from these films at this point.