10 Things Guys Should Know About "The Purge: Anarchy" [GIFS]

The Purge: Anarchy is mostly about a movie with a budget of $3 million that went on to make over $64 million. That’s why the sequel has the budget to move outside the suburban neighborhood that hosted the first film. The Purge: Anarchy takes us all over town as we follow the fortunes of five people who are spending the night (or, more specifically, the 12-hour period) where all crimes are allowed.
The film gets a little preachy in making the case that the annual Purge is actually a plot for the government to oppress the people. We kind of preferred the first film’s weird notion that the Purge actually kept crime down by letting everyone go nuts for one night. Still, The Purge: Anarchy is a lot of fun–and if you need to be sold more on it, here’s are some non-spoilerish notes on what to expect….

That generic bad guy from Captain America: The Winter Soldier is your leading man…

See, that’s Frank Grillo, and there’s a reason that we kept seeing him getting kicked around by various superheroes in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He’s being set up to become the supervillain Crossbones. That’s why the movie made sure that we saw that his character survived the collapsing building at the end. Anyway, here’s Frank Grillo taking the lead as a tough guy out to avenge his child’s death on the night of The Purge. That’s how he runs into other people. Which reminds us…

The Purge: Anarchy is really good, but misses the chance to be great after the first 30 minutes…

The movie begins like it could be a really cool anthology-style movie that follows different people throughout the night of The Purge. That would’ve been different and exciting. Instead, all of our main characters get together at the 30-minute mark, and then we’re basically looking at the usual ragtag collection of survivors that you get trying to survive a zombie film.

The bad guys are a lot more fun in The Purge: Anarchy than in The Purge…

You’re getting the grindhouse experience of the summer, thanks to the movie embracing offbeat villains who really treat The Purge like Halloween.

The bad guys are a lot weirder in The Purge: Anarchy than in The Purge…

We noted that the politics are heavy-handed here, but we really don’t know what to make of one villainess looking so much like Hillary Clinton. You’re going to think you’re watching The Hunger Games for a while.

We can’t explain why Carrie White shows up in the movie…

You know, the Carrie from Carrie by Stephen King. No spoiler here–but, seriously, what the hell?

The movie never explains Frank Grillo’s haircut…

He’s believable enough as a tough guy, but that hair style is dopey. Maybe he’s honoring his dead son’s favorite boy band.

It’s kind of fun to see how much thought people put into getting ready for The Purge…

More maniacs make for a lot more fun than in the first Purge entry.

You’ll never really believe that powerful people are off-limits during The Purge…

Now that we can see how things go outside of the suburbs–well, it’s not like the various Purgers are asking for ID before they grab someone, right? It’s like, um, anarchy.

We would’ve been okay if the whole movie was just 90 minutes of this kind of thing…

There are a few stretches where you’ll just wish that more people got killed–but there’s also an impressively quiet moment of tension that’s memorable.

And the coolest characters in the movie don’t even get proper billing…

We won’t tell you too much about the Hanover Sisters, but we’re really offended that they didn’t get more screen time. The two actresses who play them don’t even get billed in the credits. We’ll still be surprised if they don’t inspire a lot of fan fiction. The dirty kind, too, based on what we’re inspired to write.