Mike Judge‘s 2006 comedy Idiocracy is one of the most oft-referenced movies of recent times. Common underneath news headlines across the political spectrum are comments lamenting that we’ve succumb to the idiocracy of that film’s far flung future, in which a common man finds himself in the year 2505, where the human race has become a braindead malaise under outrageous politics. Beneath Judge‘s playful lampoon, though, there are truths that can be found reflected in the current American election and what it’s bringing out of its constituents. The Purge: Election Year is built in a similar vain, taking aim at similarly broad caricatures. But whereas Judge‘s punchlines are deeply overstated in their impression, it takes a decidedly more pointed stance in its derision.
The third film in the series, Election Year feels like a natural endpoint to James DeMonaco‘s vision in which America suspends all law for a 12 hour period, making all murder and crime legal. Starting with a single family in one house during 2013’s The Purge, and then the roving groups on the streets of The Purge: Anarchy, now we’re seeing the politics at large exposed in DeMonaco‘s near-future dystopia.
Set in the lead-up to an election, America’s two-party system has been broken into two camps: pro-Purge and anti-Purge. The pro-Purge group – who have held power for at least two decades – proclaim that the Purge is a method of expunging violent tendencies to increase morale, while under the surface really use it as a tool for the lower-classes to eliminate themselves. The anti-Purge movement, led by Sen. Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell), seeks to get rid of the Purge, having had her family slaughtered during one as a child.
As Purge night begins, Roan’s home is infiltrated by militants hired by her opponents, forcing her to flee her home with her bodyguard, played by Frank Grillo, and weather the lawless streets with a small group of other survivors.
Like previous Purge instalments, Election Year doesn’t pull punches in its gauche imagery. Bodies are strapped to cars, people dance around hanging corpses, there’s masked looters and bare-knuckle boxing and as much blood, fire and metal spikes as one could want. It’s all a bit lairy, with angled close-ups and a splatter of ’70s B-movie psychedelia for good measure. But what Election Year especially doubles-down on is the clarity of its message.
Beneath the The Purge series has always been a look at how we enjoy violence and the socio-political underpinnings of how something like the Purge would affect social class. Election Year does away with much of the subtlety in that regard and quite nakedly lambasts American politics, particularly in terms of race and class.
The group that senator Roan finds herself with are largely African-American, and through each of these characters is a different perspective on growing up coloured and poor in an American city. They each have a distinct background the film makes time to highlight, like Joe Dixon (Mykelti Williamson) the deli owner and EMT Laney Rucker (Betty Gabriel), all the while pointing out how the Purge is the bane of their existence. Meanwhile, their eventual safe-haven, constructed for homeless people, is run by another particular grouping who have methods outside of democracy for dealing with those in charge.
While DeMonaco‘s writing isn’t always exactly sharp, he does do a noble job of trying to juggle everything he wants Election Year to say. Another societal critique or idiom is delivered in almost every scene, building a wider image of the American lower class. However, the film loses some of its focus trying to say so much. Privileged young people, gang violence, militant rebels, the economics of small-business – all explicitly referenced with the means to say something meaningful, yet only some actually manage to. Even when considering the meta of how the violence of the picture disallows some ideas their potency – like how violence derails political conjecture in real life – there’s still simply too many for them all to ultimately lead anywhere.
That said, when the film does present a piece of dialogue or setpiece that works, it really hits. There are moments of levity that keeps the visual hyperbole cohesive. Blunt as it is, Election Year is straight as an arrow at who it’s aimed at, specially in the last half hour where it bottlenecks all its ludicrousness into a takedown of the far-right religious worthy of the video nasties. And despite all the garish action to the contrary, this may be one of the most effectively hopeful movies of the year, with an unshakeable optimism present in the deluge.
Whether this or The Purge as a whole will be remembered and cited as often as Idiocracy in 10 years is anyone’s guess. For right now, though, it’s an incredibly entertaining glimpse into an all too potentially true future.
