Last week we brought you a small sample of the plot synopsis for James DeMonaco’s THE PURGE, which stars Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey. Today we’re lucky enough to gaze upon an expanded outline for the thriller – and I’m still having trouble buying this unusual idea.
Take a look for yourself:
If on one night every year, you could commit any crime without facing consequences, what would you do? In The Purge, a speculative thriller that follows one family over the course of a single night, four people will be tested to see how far they will go to protect themselves when the vicious outside world breaks into their home. In an America wracked by crime and overcrowded prisons, the government has sanctioned an annual 12-hour period in which any and all criminal activity—including murder—becomes legal. The police can’t be called. Hospitals suspend help. It’s one night when the citizenry regulates itself without thought of punishment. On this night plagued by violence and an epidemic of crime, one family wrestles with the decision of who they will become when a stranger comes knocking.
When an intruder breaks into James Sandin’s (Ethan Hawke) gated community during the yearly lockdown, he begins a sequence of events that threatens to tear a family apart. Now, it is up to James, his wife, Mary (Lena Headey), and their kids to make it through the night without turning into the monsters from whom they hide.
Would one night without rules truly regulate crime? If anything, I’d think it would just enhance the thirst for mayhem. I realize, as with any work of fiction (especially in this genre), we have to suspend disbelief, but it’s a shaky concept that needs to be clear and believable for the film as a whole to work.
All that said, I’m damned intrigued by this one, which comes out on MAY 31, 2013. What do you think?