The First Purge Review

If you’re a fan of The Purge series, you’ll be a fan of The First Purge. It delivers what you expect from the franchise: lots of violence, looting and action. And you finally see how it all started.

What surprised me is that it has more story than the other movies. Most of the franchise is gore, gore, gore, a little story, then more gore. This one spends the first 30 or 40 minutes talking you through why this night exists and why anyone thought it would work, with just a little gore mixed in. That’s not a bad thing at all. It gives a lot of context for why things are the way they are. It also starts slow in a good way: some people enjoy the purge, some just want to loot and get rich, and eventually the government starts pushing the killing to serve its own agenda.

Go in knowing what this franchise is. It’s not an Oscar-worthy movie and you don’t need to think extra hard about it. It’s gore fun, and I’m okay with that. Your experience gets worse if you start nitpicking.

The bad: the ending could have been better. The good guys get wiped out too quickly, and Dmitri ends up taking on a whole army mostly by himself. He runs through 15 or 20 people and takes only one hit. Unless you’re the Punisher, I don’t buy it. I wish he had more scratches on him. I also didn’t like the Isaiah character one bit. He spends the movie making choices that don’t make sense.

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The First Purge (2018) Cast and Details

The First Purge (2018) is directed by Gerard McMurray and stars Y’lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade and Marisa Tomei. It runs 97 minutes and is rated R. You can look up the full cast and crew on IMDb. You might also like my Ant-Man and the Wasp review.