10 Sci-Fi Movies That Wasted Incredible Premises

5. The Purge

Premise: A family struggle to survive The Purge, a yearly night where all crime is legal.

You know this was coming. The Purge is perhaps the poster-child for films that wasted great premises and rightly so.

Instead of really exploring the concept of The Purge, this is just a generic home-invasion thriller where most of the film's world isn't shown and any sort of social commentary is pretty much non-existent. It's also full of dumb decisions, tedious set-pieces and dreadful lighting. In general, this is a very, very annoying film that should've been so much better.

Still, there is at least a silver lining with this one: it has been followed by three sequels which did actually do the concept justice, so they make up for the inadequacy of the original. Still, it was a massive let-down.