13 Frustratingly Underrated Horror Movie Sequels
5. The First Purge
Original Film:
The Purge, a terrible science-fiction horror film that nevertheless had a great premise and made enough to launch a franchise that, luckily, has since improved on the original every time. The second and third films were both solid.
Plot:
The story of the very first national Purge, which is conducted over 12 hours on Staten Island.
This is a absolutely solid horror prequel. Yes it's silly, yes it's often unintentionally hilarious and yes it's ultimately on the forgettable side, but as horror prequels go, this is actually pretty good.
Full of good performances, entertaining yet sobering social commentary and bad-ass action sequences, alongside great production design and a delightfully demented vibe, this sure as hell kicks the original film into a bin liner.
This is a very fun viewing and the 53% and 5.3 ratings on RT and IMDb respectively feel unfairly low. The first film may have sucked, but this is a franchise that has learnt from its mistakes in an admirable manner and is actually doing just fine, so it shouldn't be written off. It's safe to say a dozen Purge movies would be preferable to anything more from, say, The Ring franchise, or worse still the likes of those blasted Paranormal Activity movies.
A TV show based on the franchise will start airing shortly.