The First Purge Review: 2 Ups & 7 Downs

6. It Suffers From "Prequelitis"

Even the best prequels usually have an uphill battle on their hands trying to justify their own existence, and sadly The First Purge doesn't do a remotely good job of it.

For starters, it would've made so much more sense for The Purge 4 to be a direct sequel to the previous movie, Election Year, depicting an all-out civil war between the NFFA's followers and, well, everyone else.

Instead, this movie goes back in time to depict how The Purge began, which while not an inherently bad concept for a movie, isn't explored here with much depth or interest.

Typical for prequels, there's technology featured here that doesn't appear in the future movies - namely drones which scour the night for ethnic minorities to murder - and overall it just doesn't do enough to convince that it needed to be made.

Plus, the absence of Frank Grillo, who really helped bring the last two movies to life with his charismatic performance as Leo Barnes, is sorely missed here.