The Purge: Election Year is the dumb political horror movie America deserves

This movie has a lot to say, but none of it is particularly profound, and its points are lost amidst all the utterly unrepentant violence

The Purge: Election Year.
(Image credit: Universal Pictures)

Even more than its two predecessors, The Purge: Election Year is the kind of big, bad, bombastic genre movie America deserves in 2016.

Jettisoning the home invasion horror of the first film — which takes place in a near future where the government not only allows but encourages murder and violence one night a year — Election Year is a full-on action film, like a stupider Escape From New York. It approaches our cultural discourse with the same skull-bludgeoning relentlessness that its depraved inhabitants approach their perennial civic duty.

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Greg Cwik

Greg Cwik is a writer and editor. His work appears at Vulture, Playboy, Entertainment Weekly, The Believer, The AV Club, and other good places.