The Forever Purge

Why didn’t they think of this before?  They’ve got the numbers.  They’ve got the venomous energy.  Who’s going to stop them?

A half hour into The Forever Purge, they spring into action, stunning unsuspecting Americans with their audacity and embarrassing the far right government who stupidly encouraged this behaviour in the first place.

If you are keeping track, this is the fifth entry in the ongoing dystopian science fiction horror series.  A direct sequel to the third installment Election Year and more of an urban western than a traditional thriller, The New Founding Fathers Of America have regained power for reasons that seem entirely to do with an unresolved refugee crisis.

Mexicans are being forced off their properties in their homeland by drug cartels and are sneaking into the US to find refuge and asylum.  In the opening scene, we meet one such couple.

Adela (Ana de la Reguera), the asskicking Latina goddess, works in meat processing while her quietly stewing husband Juan (Tenoch Huerta) is a hired hand on a wealthy white family’s ranch.  The dad (Will Patton in one of his best performances) is kind and generous but only up to a point.  (Workers get a Purge Protection Bonus before seeking shelter on the big day but aren’t allowed to stay in hiding with the rich white folks.)

But his son (Josh Lucas) is a soft racist.  He doesn’t use epithets per se but he doesn’t believe in mixing the colours, if you sniff what The Earl is baking.  He also hates being upstaged.

There’s an early scene where he can’t tame a new horse. So daddo calls in Juan who does his old Horse Whisperer routine and the unruly beast lays down like an obedient child.  Lucas seethes and starts giving Juan a hard time just to let him know they’re not equals. Gee, I wonder if they’ll come to an understanding by the end of the movie.

The traditional Purge, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. on one night in March, comes and goes in ten minutes this time.  When the second siren sounds, the survivors, especially the newbies, who don’t participate are relieved it’s over.  But with the sun out and all the barriers lifted, they have no idea that the worst is yet to come.

Adela spots a caged goat outside her place of business and falls right into a trap we see a mile away.  Meanwhile, her husband and his co-worker T.T. (Alejandro Edda) drive back to start their day on Patton’s ranch only to see another hired hand and his own band of disgruntled purgers threaten the family.

This is supposed to be a working class uprising but it sure doesn’t feel that way.  A fearless Patton, having already acknowledged America’s history of settler colonialism at the expense of Indigenous populations in passing, has to point out to his captors that The Purge is a clever way for The New Founding Fathers to eliminate undesirables without actually getting their hands bloody.  That leaves more time for golf and zero time for solving actual problems facing the increasingly angered citizenry.  The whole system is on the verge of collapse.

Juan and T.T. swoop in to save the day but not in time to save one of the film’s best characters.  As the surviving band of thugs retreats, so do the rest of the family and their loyal rescuers.  Meanwhile, Adela is saved by her boss Darius (Sammi Rotibi who eventually exits without ever being seen again) but not before she does some real damage herself.  I wouldn’t fuck with her.

When the cops inevitably swoop in at the wrong time, Adela and Darius are thrown in a paddy wagon with a kooky broad who can’t stop smiling and giggling about the Purge Ever After and an unabashed white supremacist who whoops and cheers for the mayhem outside.  He’s so over the top (he has a giant swastika tattoo on his face) he might as well be a cartoon.  “Strike up the band!” he bellows in ecstasy.  “The symphony sings!”  We could do without the attempted rape.

Eventually, Juan and Adela are reunited and the race is on to find shelter from the intensifying storm.  Roses on posters found throughout Texas provide clues to where one such secret dwelling exists. 

In the meantime, the New Founding Fathers have declared Martial Law and send in the troops.  But after a bunch of militia men take over one of their bases, they retreat.  (Come on.)  As the white ranchers and their Mexican helpers ultimately make a run for an open border, having heard the announcement about it on the radio, their plans are foiled when it’s suddenly closed and they need to find another way in.  Josh Lucas’ pregnant wife needs safe haven desperately.  She’s in her third trimester.  And there’s a very pissed off white supremacist hot on their trail.

The Forever Purge was one of the many casualties of COVID-19.  It was supposed to be out in July 2020. Rather than dump it on video and streaming services, Universal gave it a proper theatrical release this past summer.  It did well enough that a sixth Purge movie is in the works.

But is there really a pressing need for it?  I’ve seen all five of these films now and they all have the same serious credibility problems, pretty visuals this time around notwithstanding.  Conspicuously, in this chapter, The NFFA are only mentioned and never seen.  (Where’s the President?) No more photo-ops and press conferences for them.  Nature abhors a vacuum and if monsters believe you’re too weak to lead they’ll happily take over and defy your dwindling authority.

Once again, there isn’t really much of a public pushback against the government’s legal genocide policy with the exception of one Indigenous cat who looks like Chad Michael Murray and cuts a real good promo on cable news. 

A major factor in the finale, he presciently points out the pointlessness of The Purge.  Releasing anger on others creates a virus that can’t be contained.  This timely idea reminds me of two early Wes Craven films, The Last House On The Left and The Hills Have Eyes, both made during a particularly brutal period in American history. 

Violence is a cancer, Craven was clearly arguing without using the actual phrase. However, he knew how to disturb an audience with skill and intelligence and even wit.  You can’t say that about The Purge movies which more often than not are exhibitions for brainless acts of depravity.  Nothing ever gets beyond the superficial and obvious here, especially the ironic ending.

It’s a testament to how normalized this policy of death has become when even newcomers like Adela walk down the street through the bloody aftermath not even reacting to all this lingering evidence of madness.  She’s too busy learning English.

Ironically, as this series chugs along, though, there has been a slight uptick in quality.  It started with The First Purge and continues here but none of the entries are capable of really delivering consistently original scares, only annoying false alarms and expected pop-ins set to loud bursts of music.

Unlike the latter Saw sequels which needlessly upped the ante on in-your-face gruesomeness, The Forever Purge is a bit more restrained mainly because half of the action is either hard to see, shot at a distance or not as grotesque as it clearly could be.  With the exception of the outdoor daytime sequences which also feel a bit dialed down, everything else takes place in low lighting and is sometimes hard to follow. None of it is particularly exciting or involving.

There are effective moments, though, but they are small ones:  a dog making a meal out of a dead body on a lawn, blood flowing down the sidewalk.  That leaves the cast to do what they can to hold our waning interest but besides Adela, the best performers are supporting players rarely seen.

Imagine what a more inventive screenwriter could do with this provocative premise.  Consider the statement made at the end of the film, how much more powerful it would’ve been if we were given compelling reasons to care.

Clearly timed to be out at the end of the chaotic Trump era, if only it pointed the blame beyond The New Founding Fathers.  At no time is America’s Drug War mentioned.  Neither is the first female President elected in Election Day.  What happened to her?  Was she really that awful? Or did the NFFA simply bide their time for a comeback?

During the abbreviated opening titles, there are a series of animated water colour stills that go from tranquil to nefarious:  a dangling noose suddenly appearing at an otherwise ordinary cookout, a barn burning as a cowboy looks on and a screaming woman falling off Mount Rushmore as four seemingly teary-eyed sculpted Presidential heads weep at the state of the nation they founded.

Considering all of them were unrepentant white supremacists who, in most cases, enslaved Black people, what exactly are they upset about?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Saturday, November 27, 2021
2:56 a.m.

The Pallbearer (1996)

Is it a drama?  Is it a comedy?  Is it a soap opera?  25 years after I first screened The Pallbearer I’m convinced the filmmakers are as confused as I am. 

It’s funny.  I thought when I dismissed it in 1996 I was overly harsh.  Turns out, all this time later, I wasn’t nearly harsh enough.

Friends star David Schwimmer plays Tom Thompson, a major beneficiary of mistaken identity.  After some guy kills himself by letting the motor run in his garage, his grief-stricken mother Ruth (a very hot Barbara Hershey) suddenly calls him, begging him to be a pallbearer at his funeral.

The problem is Tom has no fucking idea who her son was.  When he looks up his picture in an old high school yearbook, there isn’t one, just a blank, grey square.

Unable to say no, she calls him again and makes an additional request.  She wants him to deliver the eulogy, as well.  Because chronic tears are his Kryptonite, Tom is now stuck trying to pay tribute to a complete stranger.  He does no further research.

The result is painful.  All he knows about the guy is that he was in their high school chess club.  That’s it.  With his giggling friends embarrassing themselves in his presence, Tom makes it brief and vague.  No one looks pleased, especially Julie (Gwyneth Paltrow), an old crush who cries over the dead man’s casket but doesn’t remember him, either.  For a time, she even forgets that Tom sat next to her during their high school band practices. Why is everyone so stupid in this movie?

While helping to carry the coffin to an awaiting hearse, Tom spots Julie grumbling to his friends about their inappropriate behaviour.  As she leaves, he calls out to her while redirecting the pallbearer brigade in her direction.  Somehow, he manages to get a coffee date. Her standards are too low.

In the meantime, Ruth, who is clearly very lonely, keeps luring him in.  Early on, she even offers him the suicide car which he is reluctant to accept.  It takes him a while to realize it needs a new carburetor.

While they’re up in her son’s bedroom, as they flip through a photo album she gently places her hand on his knee and it’s go time.  Could there be a less sizzling affair?

And could Tom be any less sympathetic?  He’s clearly taking advantage of a very sad older blond who becomes a little too attached to someone who’s only using her since the younger blond he really wants is giving him very mixed signals.

After he drives Julie home early on, she suddenly remembers who he is but makes the mistake of declaring him a nice guy.  When he makes his move, there’s an awkward collision and an even more awkward admission.  But since this is a romantic comedy, her feelings will evolve.  And then they will change back.

While a sheepish, annoyed Tom lives at home with his loud, oversharing divorced mom (a wasted Carol Kane) and is trying to achieve George Costanza’s dream, Julie works in a vintage vinyl shop and contemplates getting away from it all for a year, a plan not at all supported by her wealthy family (she lives in one of her dad’s buildings) who remain blindsided by her belated decision to call off her wedding to a character we never meet.

Meanwhile, Tom’s lawyer friend Scott (future Alias star Michael Vartan) is married to jealous Cynthia (Toni Collette) and his other pal, the scheming Brad (Michael Rapaport), is engaged to a shrill Lauren (Monk’s original sidekick Bitty Schram in a demeaning, one-note role). Julie suggests they go on a double date with Scott and Cynthia which goes horribly wrong when Tom’s living arrangement is unintentionally exposed and Scott ends up making more of a connection with his dream girl than he does.

As he continues to fuck around with Ruth, Tom suddenly starts stalking Julie outside the record shop under a questionable pretense. That’s when he spots Scott showing up after hours making a similar mistake.

He’s lucky. Julie doesn’t care that he lives with his mom and she’s not at all into a eventually remorseful Scott. (She doesn’t catch on to Tom’s slip about him witnessing the kiss.) But he keeps on seeing Ruth who starts bringing him to family gatherings like a trophy dong.

Shit goes sour, though, once Ruth learns about Julie. There’s an unusually intense phone call where she makes it clear she wants the fucking to continue and will not be ignored or replaced. Considering its constantly shifting tone, small credit to the filmmakers for not taking a Fatal Attraction detour on The Graduate superhighway, although such a move may have livened up this rotting corpse of a movie, if just for a short while.

Need I remind you this is supposed to be a romantic comedy but there aren’t any laughs and not a single pairing has any chemistry. No one is worth rooting for, either. We’re witnessing a bunch of jerks and indecisive pussies flail around until the inevitable reconciliations, some of which aren’t even shown, just implied, and not at all deserved or earned.

Tom has to swallow his pride when Brad defies his edict to avoid marrying his “albatross”. They actually get into a fight at his bachelor party. Despite making a move on Julie, Scott and Cynthia seem perfectly fine again at the wedding reception.

There’s the inevitable moment when Tom’s two relationships crash into each other publicly and he is finally exposed for the selfish asshole he really is. Even though Julie tells him their fling isn’t permanent because of her upcoming trip, he still pleads with her to stick around, effectively taking her family’s side. It takes a very big bribe to resolve their tension. She hasn’t traded up.

In the end, with the exception of grieving mothers who are left abandoned and sad, everyone else gets pretty much what they want, although I question the fate of Tom and Julie.

I want to return to Ruth again for a second. Why is she so besotted with Tom? She believes he was her son’s best friend which doesn’t completely explain her lusty feelings. Or maybe it does without further exploration that is thankfully not undertaken. After a fateful conversation with Scott, Tom realizes who she really meant to contact. As it turns out, this other young man was barely an acquaintance. Never has a movie been less interested in examining and uncovering the elusive history of one of its own dead characters. No one even bothers with a Google search.

The whole pay-off to this is very much an “oh, come on!” moment. I mean, really? What are the chances there’d be two guys with the exact same name who look remarkably alike and are roughly the same age? Having already been had and then heartlessly discarded by a shady coward, a resigned Ruth gives up on banging any guy named Tom Thompson.

It could’ve been worse. She could’ve been engaged to a Costanza.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, November 20, 2021
7:07 p.m.