New The Purge 2 Anarchy Movie Received Mixed Reviews From Major Critics
Universal Pictures released their new horror/thriller flick, “The Purge 2: Anarchy” into theaters this weekend, and all the top movie critics have turned in their reviews. It got a pretty mediocre/mixed response from them with an overall 49 score out of a possible 100 across 31 reviews at the Metacritic.com site.
The film stars: Frank Grillo, Michael K. Williams, Carmen Ejogo, Zach Gilford, Kiele Sanchez, and Keith Stanfield. We’ve added blurbs from a few of the critics,below.
Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, gave it a 70 grade, saying: “Kill or be killed isn’t the official tag line of The Purge: Anarchy, but it fits. It would also make a more suitable title for this satisfyingly creepy, blunt, down-and-dirty thriller, one of those follow-ups that improves on the original.”
Frank Scheck from The Hollywood Reporter, gave it a 70 score. He stated: “The Purge: Anarchy efficiently exploits its high-concept premise while delivering far more visceral thrills than its predecessor.”
Claudia Puig from USA Today, gave it a 63 grade, stating: “The film is at its best when it focuses on the more specific conflicts of five people thrown together on Purge night.”
Simon Abrams from RogerEbert.com, gave it a 50 grade. He said: “So weak on a basic storytelling level that it makes you want to nitpick everything about it, from characters’ generically illogical decisions (ex: Why are you running towards mounted guns?) to its cheap-looking, jiggly hand-held cinematography.”
Bruce Ingram from the Chicago Sun-times, gave it a 50 score. He said: “In The Purge: Anarchy, unfortunately, grim and brutal is pretty much all we get.”
Betsy Sharkey over at the Los Angeles Times, gave it a 50 score as well. She said: “The Purge: Anarchy is a good deal bloodier, but also — gulp — a good deal better than its predecessor. Make no mistake, a good “Purge” does not equal a good movie, but the post-apocalyptic thriller is slightly more interesting because it takes itself, and its menace, more seriously.”
Wlater Addiego from the San Francisco Chronicle, awarded it a 50 score, stating: “The new film pokes heavyhanded fun at extreme conservatives and has a “power to the people” sub-theme, but it’s full of ultra-violence and is dragged down by standard scare tactics, thin characters and the absurdities of the premise.”
Loren King from the Boston Globe, gave it a 50 grade, stating: “Give credit to writer-director James DeMonaco for at least attempting to give his action thriller some heft with a plot that concerns our obsession with violence, ham-fisted as it is. But The Purge: Anarchy is still just an excuse to bombard us with high-powered weaponry, armored vehicles, vigilantes, and masked marauders in creepy Joker-like makeup.”
Joe McGovern over at Entertainment Weekly, gave it a 42 score, saying: “When the situation is played totally straight, as it is for eighty percent of the running time, the message is boring: We’d all commit murder, theft and anarchy if only we could. With a narrative as depressively simplistic as that, we do find ourselves identifying with the characters in the movie—counting the minutes until the Purge is over.”
Guy Lodge from Variety, gave it a 40 score, saying: “For all the philosophical and metaphorical shortcomings of his script, however, DeMonaco is an efficient orchestrator of action.”
Michael O’Sullivan at the Washington Post, gave it a 25 grade. He stated: “The film defies one of the fundamental rules of capitalism: Exploitation of the proletariat may be well and good, but don’t execute them all. At the same time, “The Purge: Anarchy” obeys a cardinal law of Hollywood: Shoot first and ask questions later.”
Kyle Smith over at the New York Post, gave it a 25 grade, saying: “I’ve read ingredients labels that were scarier than The Purge: Anarchy, a plodding horror flick that mistakenly thinks it has big ideas.”
Finally , Jordan Hoffman over at the New York Daily News, gave it a very bad 20 grade ,stating: “The film’s “What if?” scenario takes the germ of an interesting social-science idea and lets it rot in a nasty, ethically questionable cesspool of junk cinema.” Stay tuned. Also, get your favorite Movie stuff, and more by Clicking Here.
