I love the idea behind The Purge. I loved it when I first saw the trailer and I still love it today. This makes it too bad that in the hands of writer-director James Demonaco it just becomes your standard home invasion flick that never cashes in on that great premise. Instead of having our characters escaping a city gone mental and showing us a true dark side of humanity, Demonaco is content to make just another siege movie that contains lots of swelling music, a few creepy masks, and mild boredom. He does keep things tightly shot and goes for some minor social commentary but the pay off just can't match the promise.

It's the year 2022 and in America the unemployment rate is a mere one-percent and crime is at an all-time low. In order to reward the population, in a quite twisted way, once a year the government allows for crime to run free for a twelve hour period. Meaning you can do whatever illegal activity you fancy (be it looting, vandalism and even murder) without any repercussions. It's dubbed "The Purge" and caught right in the middle of it is security expert James (Ethan Hawke) and his family.

James has developed the best home security system on the market and is planning on using it to spend the night of the purge locked down with his wife Mary (Lena Headey), lustful teenage daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane), and tech geek young son Charlie (Max Burkholder). Also in the mix, because he snuck in to proclaim his love for her since her folks don't approve, is Zoey's boyfriend. However, things are soon to get much worse for them as Charlie spots a man on their outdoor camera running down the street screaming for help and decides to let him in.

Along come a group of yuppie-looking, masked baddies who are lead by a seemingly charming stranger (Rhys Wakefield) and his shit-eating grin demanding that they let open up and basically give back their "victim". Upon not agreeing to this, the family soon finds themselves under attack leading to plentiful (tedious) scenes of our baddies creeping around in the dark house looking for their escapee. There's a few attempts at suspense, a lot of poor scenes involving Charlie and his robot creation and some moments of sharp violence on the way to a finale that throws in a twist more likely to annoy you than please.

Somehow in the last few years Hawke has become the go-to guy in B-level Hollywood thrillers. He's never going to be a top tier star but it looks like studios feel he can at least carry a lower-budgeted effort to a decent opening weekend - this was disproven by the miserable performance of Getaway co-starring teen pop tart Selena Gomez. As an alcoholic writer haunted by supernatural goings-on in Sinister, I thought he was actually pretty good but in The Purge he pretty much just plays the "tough guy" role. He's not bad but he's also quite bland. Headey is wasted as the wife and most scenes involving Burkholder are a wash. I just had a difficult time buying the actors as a family unit and found them pretty ineffective that way. I did enjoy Wakefield in his role as he managed to be pretty sinister.

You know, I really wanted to like The Purge a Hell of a lot more than I did. It had such a cool set-up and just spins its wheels with it. If you're going to portray something so large scale that is basically a government sanctioned country-wide riot then you shouldn't cordon the whole story to one claustrophobic house. Do something major with it, fuel the crazy desires your audience surely has banging around in their heads upon thinking of the premise - don't wuss out. The Purge wusses out. Too bad. Thankfully, the sequel which is due in June 2014 (The Purge: Anarchy) seems to have addressed this by taking it to the streets and channeling such fare as Escape from New York - the teaser trailer looks pretty bad-ass and I'll probably check it out. (Chris Hartley, 3/20/14)

Directed By: James Demonaco.
Written By: James Demonaco.

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Adelaide Kane, Max Burkholder.