10 Movie Sequels That Completely Flipped The Original
6. The Purge: Anarchy Swapped Upper Class Victims For The Poor
Released in 2013 and acting as the first in horror super producer Jason Blum’s string of unexpected sleeper hits, the original Purge may have been buoyed by a pair of impressively intense central turns from Ethan Hawke and Game of Thrones star Lena Headey, but the movie failed to take advantage of the impressive promise of its clever premise. The original film was, despite the barnstorming central conceit, essentially just another home invasion thriller which cribbed elements of everything from Funny Games to Wes Craven’s underrated nineties chiller The People Under the Stairs.
The sequel, however, was quick to right this wrong, centring the political satire implicit in the film’s premise and addressing the social inequality both in the future America depicted in-universe and real-life contemporary America. The film achieved this by switching the protagonist’s POV from an upper-class family avoiding purgers via high tech security and surveillance systems to a diverse range of poorer characters unable to afford such luxuries and forced to fend for themselves as a result.
It made the sequel a far more enticing prospect and left both critics and audiences impressed, so much so that the new perspective was carried over into two more subsequent sequels.