“The Purge: Anarchy” wants to be a political thriller. It mostly ends up being a chase movie with a bad guy in a mask. The 2014 sequel to the original “Purge” takes the annual night of murder and turns it into a road trip through Los Angeles. The idea is good. The execution is not.
Trailer, via Blumhouse.
The Setup
The movie opens with a family escaping a purge zone, only to get separated. One daughter heads toward safety. The other heads toward revenge. The two stories don’t meet until late in the runtime, and the film spends its middle stretch following a group of strangers who band together for protection.
The setup is simple. A masked killer, a group of scared people, and a city turned into a hunting ground. That simplicity is both the film’s strength and its weakness.
The Problem With The Mask
The masked killer is supposed to be terrifying. He’s fast, he’s silent, and he’s nearly unstoppable. In practice, he feels like a video game boss, popping up at convenient moments to push the plot forward. His scenes are tense in theory, but the film leans on shock value over actual dread.
The chase sequences are the best parts of “Anarchy.” Cars crash, people fight, and the city’s streets become a maze of danger. These moments work because they’re physical and immediate. They don’t rely on dialogue or backstory to hold attention.
The problem is that these sequences are few and far between. The film spends too much time on speeches about class warfare and corporate greed. Those scenes are meant to build tension, but they just slow down the momentum the action scenes created.
“It’s a war, not a game.”
That line sums up the film’s ambitions. It also explains why those ambitions fall short. The Purge is presented as a social experiment gone wrong, but the film never gives its characters enough room to make that experiment feel real.
A City Without Rules
The setting is a major draw. Los Angeles during the purge is a nightmare version of the city, with wealthy neighborhoods barricaded and poor districts left exposed. The film uses this contrast to make a point about inequality. It’s a valid point, but the film doesn’t do justice to it.
The supporting cast is thin. The characters are mostly ciphers, thrown together for convenience. There’s a cop, a preacher, and a young couple. None of them get enough screen time to earn their arcs.
The film’s ending tries to tie everything together, but it feels rushed. The two separate storylines collide at the finale, and the resolution is abrupt. It leaves the audience wanting more, but not in the way the filmmakers intended.
Where It Lands
“The Purge: Anarchy” is not a bad movie. It’s just a shallow one. It knows how to stage a set piece, but it can’t sustain a larger argument. The politics are there, but they’re treated as background noise rather than central drama.
The film’s biggest flaw is its refusal to commit to its own rules. The purge is supposed to be a contained event, but the film treats it as a permanent state of chaos. That contradiction is never resolved.
On its own terms, “Anarchy” is a decent thrill ride. As a statement about social inequality, it fails. As a sequel, it coasts on the energy of its predecessor without adding much of its own.
The chase scenes are the reason to watch. The speeches are the reason to skip it.
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