Starring Y’Lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade, Luna Lauren Velez, Mugga, Kristen Solis, Marisa Tomei, Patch Darragh and Rotimi Paul

Directed by Gerard McMurray

Written by James DeMonaco

Blumhouse, in cinemas now

In the wake of the New Founding Fathers of America’s sudden election victory in 2014, the USA changes. The NFFA have promised healing, a return to a healthy economy, the America of dreams made real. But now they have to deliver on those promises and to do so, they need a big idea.

What they get is the Purge, suggested by Doctor Updale (Marisa Tomei), it’s a limited scope experiment that would make all crime legal for 12 hours on Staten Island. If this goes right, the NFFA will have a hold on power that’s almost impossible to release. They won’t allow it to go wrong.

This fourth instalment of The Purge series does two clever things straight out of the gate. Firstly, it’s a prequel that establishes the context for the events of the previous movies. Secondly, it makes the fact that these movies are political and social science fiction real and overt. Arlo Sabian, the Chief Of Staff played with oily joy by Patch Darragh and Doctor Updale are very nearly the only white people in the movie. The central cast are all persons of colour and the site chosen for the ‘Experiment’ is a low income, blue collar, predominantly non-white neighbourhood. Previous movies, especially the first, made this subtext. Here? TEXT.

And it works perfectly. Lex Scott Davis and Joivan Wade are especially great as siblings caught on each side of the cruel barbs of the Experiment. Nya is a community organiser fighting it with every fibre of her being. Isaiah, her brother, is sick of their rundown apartment, has taken a job with the local drug dealer (and Nya’s ex), Dmitri (Y’Lan Noel in a starmaking turn). Isaiah signs up for the experiment so he can get revenge on Skeletor, the local psychopath who attacked him during his first day on the job.

The movie takes great pains to show this is a neighbourhood that may not be entirely safe but it’s certainly functional. The Purge shatters it, not just because of the violence but because of the freedom from consequence. Dmitri fights off a succession attempt, Nya and Isaiah’s building is trashed, the local church population are slaughtered. The violence that comes is quick, sometimes flashy and often brutal.

But the movie’s genius play is that the experiment doesn’t work. Aside from Skeletor, the assault on Dmitri and a couple of other locations, by and large, the neighbourhood stays safe. And that can’t be allowed.

The idea that the Purge was always a stacked deck is impressive. The guts the movie has to show where the idea comes from are astounding. Soldiers wear black minstrel masks, a senior officer works in a Gestapo uniform, the Kekistani flag is disguised just enough as it flies above a kill team’s ATV. This was always about class. It was always about race. And here, at the start of the fictional universe and in 2018, the movies can finally be honest about that. That makes The First Purge a fierce, focused, angry piece of political science fiction at the exact time that we’re told fiction doesn’t have to be political. This can’t be anything but and it’s all the stronger for it.

Verdict: The best entry in the series so far and a standout from Blumhouse in general. 9.5/10

Alasdair Stuart