If the movie can convince me how this night of "Purging" is not only acceptable but, more so, inevatble, then I think I would enjoy it as I like "all hell break loose" type of films and appocalyptic films. Sadly, I don't see how they could convince me of this and the posts in this thread seem to confirm that.

Will wait for the DVD... when it's cheap.

What a shitty movie.  I didn't have high expectations going in and I was fully prepared to suspend belief for the ridiculous premise.  (I'll admit I was a little bit interested in where the story-line could go.)

But I won't pretend I'm full-scale retarded.  The ending was absolutely ridiculous and it confirms my personal belief that Ethan Hawke is not a capable actor.

I want my $1.50 to go to James  DeMonaco, as the writer, not as a director.  Even though I hated the story, I still think he could be capable of pulling off something interesting.  I loved 'The Negotiator'.

Quoted from Dreamscale What did surprise me was that I was able to completely predict the ending "twist".  Just too obvious, as far as I'm concerned. The general premise is also flawed, but still very interesting and obviously very marketable.  It seems that the idea is that the haves are safe, while the have nots are on their own, but in reality, wouldn't the have nots be the ones to fear? Murder seems to be the "crime of choice" during the purge, when in reality, I think the poor would have a field day in obtaining things they could never legally be able to acquire.

I wasn't gonna chirp in, but a recent string of comments have compelled me to do so.
I'm quoting Jeff here, because I agree with it. If the poor can kill and steal
for 12 hours without fear of getting arrested, it does make sense that the rich would form 'killer parties' and go after them. Much is made of the 'homeless guy' in the film when nothing actually suggests that he is.

There was s moment in the film where I was hoping for a twist. The one given was too obvious as Jeff said, but rather, I thought it would have been more interesting if Hawke and Heady actually encouraged home invasions, thus "killing" any Purgiers who enter thier domain. This would explain why the top-notch barricade could come down so easily and why the power gets knocked out but the monitors are still on.

The motivation for the neighbors would have been more believable had they found out the security for the Purge wasn't top grade as opposed to them just thinking a "wealthy" neighbor got rich off them.

I don't think the film was bad nor a waste of time. Hopefully the sequels can expand on the premise of nilism and perhaps genocide. ("you cannot attack government officials" or "public servants such as police") Makes yuou wonder how rules get enforced.

Recently watched this. The entire movie just irritated me.
The concept seemed intriguing but they never really explore it. Apart from the opening shots of random violence, the rest of the film sinks into what it really is - a bland home invasion movie I've seen a million times before. What a waste of potential.
Having said that, the concept is probably not that great after giving it some thought. One night of "Purging" would probably cost the government billions, devastate the economy and far from being the nice and apparently peaceful loving civilians these characters propose to be, would turn the country into a hellhole of unseen proportions.
Unemployment would probably rise, not drop.  Why work all year when you can plan for 364 days and legally rob a bank and then live off the money until next year? Or rob enough money to just live free and happy for the rest of your life?
I see murder in most cases as a crime of passion or something spontaneous. Doubt you'd wait for Government permission to do such a deed unless you are indeed psychotic - and if you are, you probably would kill regardless of having "permission". What this "Purge Warning" does is actually entice people to kill. It's almost teasingly saying "Go out and kill someone". Why? I don't know.

Brings me to the characters. Oh my days.
The villains act nuts for no real reason apart from to try and be scary. Act crazy, dress in masks, swing around in wooded areas, talk silly. Why? I suppose its meant to be creepy. Assuming they are "normal" every other day of the year  why go through all this hassle and turn into escaped mental patients just because of one night? It's fricking ridiculous.  I'd buy their actions a little more if this thing bothered to explain it but it just relies on us caring about a family - which could not be more cardboard than the home the homeless guy they let inside slept in.
The family. Wow. Awful, awful dialogue and their interactions just made me want to slap myself. Why, WHY do they constantly creep around their own house as if they dont know where they are going? WHY do they constantly leave each other at several points in the film and never show any concern for each other? Christ, the Dad only springs into action to save his daughter when he spills a monologue to the audience about how he should save his daughter because a strange man is now in the house. No shit, genius!
Later on, the mother finds the daughter. What does she do? Nothing! The daughter runs off and Mother heads back inside the safe room only to tell Dad she's run off somewhere!! WTF was that about??
AHHHG. This film annoyed me, I'll stop here.

I will say I believe the concept was taken from old ancient Halloween/ Druid traditions. I'm not exactly sure but the idea of the day was that everyone would dress in the opposite sex, do different to what they do normally etc and this would aid in some kind of release from every day pressure.  I would have liked to have seen something more akin to those legends than what this gave; a daft almost unintentionally comedic thriller that should have been much better.

Saw this.

It's an interesting flick, I'll give it that. The overall concept did serve to slightly complicate certain plot points that otherwise would've been very straightforward. Other elements were fairly disturbing and did get you thinking, at least a little bit. It also had its share of suspense and I thought it was cool that the bad guys didn't get in until one hour in. Not a structure that occurs often nowadays.

I also thought Ethan Hawke did a decent job. Probably the only truly solid performance in the film. I'm just coming off Richard Linklater's "Before..." trilogy though so perhaps I'm biased. Still, never been a big fan of Ethan Hawke so the fact that his performance stuck out, even a little, is worth noting.

Nevertheless, I had a myriad of problems with this film that frankly I could go on about all day. What it essentially boils down to is that the central concept is really, really, REALLY loaded and would absolutely never ever happen in real life. Incorporating that into a film, you can either put in the hard work and try your damndest to produce a fully realized moral/political parable or you can set it up as simple as you can and ask the audience to just go with it. The Purge tries to do both and unfortunately, it's just not smart enough to pull off the intellectual stuff, resulting in something of a self-sabotage with every new detail about the world it's created. Its exploration of humanity, morality, politics, and American culture is completely hackneyed and flippant. I'm not sure if that's because they were trying to market to teenagers or something or because the writer/director just bit off more than he could chew as far as his own insight was concerned.

I also thought basically all the characters were pretty terrible. First off, I really hate the whole white suburbia family angle in general. It almost always makes for bland, corny, and cliched characters and indeed, The Purge is no exception. But it's compounded by just how stupid, impulsive, and reckless (not to mention ever pervasive) some of the characters' decisions are. Just about sunk the film for me. Also, with the exception of a few notes of dialogue, the villains were really gimmicky and hokey, both in how they looked and how they acted. Really wish they'd done away with those stupid masks all together.

The ending (that is, the last five minutes or so) was weak as well. I think the filmmakers flat out selected the absolute wrong way to go with it. Just incredible safe, predictable, and empty.

A mixed bag for me, I'd say.

Yeah I agree. This film actually pissed me off. Some shitty little home invasion... what does one home invasion have to do with the concept of The Purge?

What was the point in selling me on the stupid idea in the first place? I suspended belief for this film. I had to accept the sheer ridiculousness of the concept, the least they could do is explore the concept in depth.

The girl dancing through the house with the machetes was laughable. Those gay college students (gay as in pathetic, not as in homosexual or happy)... I mean, really? Just because they put on a few masks and move their faces around in front of the camera, it was cringe-worthy. They could at least have tried to make it look scary.

As said by others here the poor would rip shit to bits. The rich would be rich no more and it would only take one night. It would be chaos. Now THERE'S a film I'd like to write. There'd be no gay-assed students taking shit over, I can tell you now.

It would have worked better if they just stuck with the old residents as being the full-on antagonists. They were actually scarier than the students. The street could be locked down but obviously the residents can still have at it. maybe there are affairs going on. Who's going to want to kill who? Or just leave it at the Residents ganging up on the one family and have them battle them. That would be creepy if done right. The students were superfluous to this script, ruined it, IMHO.

Not to interrupt the flow of conversation, but we stopped equating the word "gay" with "pathetic" about 5 years ago. Apparently you didn't get the memo.

As for the film, I can't wrap my head around the concept. I simply don't buy it. So I'm avoiding this one like the plague.

Quoted from albinopenguin Not to interrupt the flow of conversation, but we stopped equating the word "gay" with "pathetic" about 5 years ago.

That's just gay.  

Shawn.....><

Quoted from Ledbetter That's just gay.

Shawn is very gay, but that doesn't make him a bad person.

Watch the movie for what it does offer, and what if offers is far better than most of the crap in the genre.

Far from great, maybe not even all that good, but definitely not bad either.

I didn't like it because I thought the main bad guy was horrible. Could have picked a better actor and his dialogue is obviously intended to creep out 14 year old kids. Also I found he was trying to act too much like the Joker or something.

I still didn't find it to be horrible. And I think there's a second one coming out, which I will probably see in theaters as I did this one.

The Strangers and You're Next were better (although You're Next kind of fell apart for me near the end, I still thought it was a very fun movie)

Quoted from albinopenguin Not to interrupt the flow of conversation, but we stopped equating the word "gay" with "pathetic" about 5 years ago. Apparently you didn't get the memo.

Who's we? You and who?

Maybe you and your friend should send the memo to the Oxford English Dictionary: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/gay

That's the US version, btw.

Myself and pretty much all of society. You sound like a 14 year old boy playing xbox live.

And oh look, an article written two days about the subject matter....

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/11/12/apple-dictionary-app-sudbury-teen-gay-defintion/

Anyways, sorry to the mods for derailing the thread. Figured someone should call good ol' Dustin out on the matter.

Quoted from albinopenguin Pretty much since actual gay people started taking offense to the definition of the word. And oh look, an article written two days about the subject matter.... http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/11/12/apple-dictionary-app-sudbury-teen-gay-defintion/

I imagine they would have taken offence right from the start... but now they should be fine. The ones that aren't are idiots.

The word is clearly defined in the dictionary. So whatever you and your friend(s) think is neither here nor there. What should be and what is are often two different things, suck it up.

It doesn't matter what gay people choose to call themselves, it will always end up becoming a word of ridicule. I mean, they stole the word, gay. Who could make fun of gay, right? How could gay ever become derogatory?

I'll tell you how... as soon as gay people took on the word, it became derogatory amongst heterosexual males. Instantly. How many times are we going to change words just because other people don't like the connotations? Why are people just so full of fucking shit?

I couldn't give a flying fuck about your politically correct bullshit. I'll use words as they are defined in the dictionary. If you have an issue with that, take it up with the dictionary.

Quoted from albinopenguin Myself and pretty much all of society. You sound like a 14 year old boy playing xbox live. And oh look, an article written two days about the subject matter.... http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/11/12/apple-dictionary-app-sudbury-teen-gay-defintion/ Anyways, sorry to the mods for derailing the thread. Figured someone should call good ol' Dustin out on the matter.

This is why you should always quote people... as they can go back in and edit their posts.

The dictionary defines words as used by the majority of people. If words are used that way then the dictionary has a DUTY to the English language to include the definition. If they don't include on some sort of protest, then it isn't an honest dictionary.

Good god man. I'm not one for PC either but you clearly just shot yourself in the foot.

You can quote both of my edits, I meant them both.

Since your retort speaks for itself (and you made yourself look like an ignoramus), I'm going to ignore most of your discussion points. But I will say this. You said the dictionary defines words as used by the majority of the people. Well the majority does NOT define gay like you do. Hence why the source you quoted will be changing in the near future. Furthermore, gay is not defined as "pathetic" in the mirriam webster dictionary. Just fyi.