The First Purge Review: 2 Ups & 7 Downs

5. The Painfully Cheap Production Values

Despite having by far the biggest budget of the four Purge movies - it cost $13 million, more than quadruple the original - it feels embarrassingly cheap at times, with howlingly ropey production values proving incredibly distracting throughout.

For starters, the CGI is frequently appalling. Marisa Tomei's very first scene sees her awkwardly stood against a green screen background, where little effort has been made to make the lighting sources match. Elsewhere the action scenes are filled with hokey digital blood splatter, even hilariously splashing onto the camera in one instance.

Then there's the sound. A woeful amount of dialogue has clearly been dubbed-over in post-production, with scenes awkwardly and unnaturally cutting away from characters' faces while they're speaking.

The sound editing, meanwhile, is basically criminal for a major Hollywood movie released in cinemas worldwide.

It's as though the sound department just used a royalty-free sound bank for the various stock screams and gun reload sound effects, because if you watch a decent amount of movies and have a good pair of ears, a lot of the sounds in this film will be rather familiar indeed.