Fourth Purge movie, The Purge: Island, goes back to the very beginning of the story

We spoke a few days ago about how The Purge TV series will tie into the movies and now it seems that there are more big screen tales to tell too.

Speaking about the fourth movie in the series, writer and director James DeMonaco said that the plan on telling the story of when it all began: “It takes place on Staten Island which is cool — the first experimental Purge. Next July 4th, it’ll be coming. Okay, let me think what I can give. I said it’s the first experimental Purge, which I don’t know if I was supposed to say, but now I’ve said it, so you have it.”

Reflecting on the current situation in the world, in particular the US, DeMonaco says now is the time to tell the story an sees that there are parallels to the tale: “I think of all the movies, it’s definitely the most topical. It really is a creepy reflection of what’s happening right now. The bad serendipity is something I think people will be intrigued [by], to say the least, and scared and saddened by.

As for were the inspiration came from, he goes on: “When we first did it [we] read something Scorsese said a long time ago about what he called “smuggler’s cinema”: He said it was what the guys in the ’50s and ’40s were doing when they were being forced to make genre movies, army movies, and Westerns because they wanted the studio contracts. So what they did was smuggle their own ideas into the genre that they were forced to do. All these political ideas in these great films were starting to emerge, but they were hidden. We were saying, “Let’s do the same thing with The Purge movies. Let’s make a very entertaining film, but within the entertaining genre trappings, let’s have some kind of message and create some kind of discourse on what’s happening in society.” And I think that’s the fun of them. The people who want to can see the parallels to our society and the reflection upon our government and talk about that after the movie, or they can watch it as just a real fun, kick-ass action-horror film.

Isn’t the best art that which cleverly relicts our own world? Look at The Matrix, 1984, V For Vendetta and other such works: “I think Island is the most crowd-pleasing of the films. It’s so kick ass in its third act. What’s fun, too, is there’s an anti-hero. More than the previous films, there’s a singular hero in this movie. This is one man’s journey, William, an anti-hero inspired by Eastwood in Unforgiven, so it’s this very cool, modern, kind of badass who redeems himself through the story.”

As for the event itself, DeMonaco says that there is a reason for people to get involved in The Purge itself and to allow these things to happen: “I was wondering how you get people to stay for the first Purge, and what they do is they start monetizing it. People from Staten Island can easily go to Brooklyn for the evening, so what they do is start promising very decent sums of money for the very poor people in the neighborhood. It becomes a monetization of murder and violence, incentivizing killing and keeping people around for them to be victims. So you see the inception of how grotesque the idea of the Purge is, the manipulation upon the society. That’s where it becomes, sadly, I think, very topical right now with the current administration — and also terrifying, because, as you said, no one’s prepared for what’s about to happen. In fact, some people don’t think anything’s going to happen and then there’s this great twist [regarding] how they manipulate the evening.”

It sounds like DeManaco has been having fun with these movies but it really ready to look at the society behind it and how close it is to our own.

And THAT is the scary part: “I think people will have fun. They start shooting in two weeks, which is so exciting.”

Ranking with the Fast & Furious movies, The Purge movies, while nowhere near as good, are also guilty pleasures… but maybe that’s all about to change.

Source: Vulture