10 Films That Helped Blumhouse Take Over Cinema
7. The Purge
The Purge trilogy is one of the stranger corners of the Blumhouse back catalogue, given its constantly fluctuating quality and unusual relationship with the inherent social commentary of its own premise. Writer-director James DeMonaco is another genre auteur in the Blumhouse mould, having only made one, little-seen feature before the first Purge movie in 2013.
These films are an example of Blumhouse experimenting with overt social commentary in the way that would later carry Get Out to an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The concept of the Purge itself is ripe for commentary about totalitarian rule and, by the third and fourth films, DeMonaco has made the franchise an explicit critique of today's political landscape in America.
The first of the Purge movies was one of Blumhouse's biggest successes, with a budget of just $3m, and the box office receipts for the sequels have continued to rise, despite very little tinkering with the actual formula of the stories. Blumhouse is not a studio that separates its one-offs from its franchises and so, when The Purge caught fire, they were able to capitalise and turn it into a reliable cash cow.