The Purge: Season One - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

The Purge: Season One

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

​

Movie

I was a bit fan of The Purge when it originally came out a good 5 years ago, as it was one of those BRUTAL home invasion thrillers that put the fear of God in you when watching. Director/Writer James DeMonaco kind of spun it off into an action/political series in the later three films, pushing the CONCEPT of the purge more so than the thrills and chills itself in those later outings. I will admit, the Blumhouse horror films are quite a lot of fun to watch (until the over the top politically charged prequel that came out earlier this year), with nasty kills, wicked humor, and enough action to keep me entertained. When it was announced that a TV show was being made about the movies I honestly wondered how this was going to play out. The concept of the purge is that for a 12 hour period (over night), once a year the New Founding Fathers (the new leaders of the U.S. government) allowed any and all crime to be legal in order to “purge” the violence from humanity. Like all things regarding human violence and politics, the movies evolved into the purge being less a scary commentary on human nature’s innate violence in a satirical way, and more about pushing politics and agendas with the government actively enacting the purge as a way to get rid of minorities and push for more profits (which is where the prequel went over the edge with no hope of return). A movie that is made about 12 hours is easy enough to depict, but when you have a 10 episode run of 45 minutes each, then it’s a little harder as you need to put filler and stretch things out longer than it should.

Like all the movies, the show revolves around varying groups of people with little to no previous interaction having to come together and fend off the nightmares of the purge. This time it’s a marine coming home from duty and his white collar executive sister, a mysterious man with a hidden agenda, and a newlywed couple trying to make a financial decision that will affect their future forever (for either good or bad). Each one of the group is given the spotlight as the series jumps back and forth through time, peeling back layers of their existence before this night, as well as what they do DURING the purge itself as they try to hold onto their moral compass and way of life in the face of so much pain and temptation.

In many ways the show does fulfill what it set out to do. Much of the series does revolve around the actual events of the purge itself, and the limiting itself to 10 episodes really helped keep most of the bloat at bay. While I’m usually not a fan of jumping back and forth through time to tell a story, it was kind of necessary in this situation so as to keep that bloat to a minimum and produce an onion layering story telling method that allowed for each of the characters to be fleshed out. The movies themselves are brutal and short, but with a 425 minute run time we don’t have the luxury of just reveling in the violence and gleaning what little tidbits of backstory that we can. Here the time jumps allow us to see the characters BEFORE the night, as well as what they do DURING the night.

The one major flaw that I saw in the series is what followed The First Purge in my review of it earlier in 2018. The politics. Since there is so much leeway with the time line and so much time to fill in, Director/writer James Monaco pushes in heavy doses of politics and social/racial divide that sort of bogged down the last movie (which he actually didn’t direct, although he did write). Luckily it’s not nearly so heavy handed here, but it’s still an irritant considering how fun and brutal the previous three movies were.




Rating:

Rated TV-MA by the MPAA




Video:

The Purge: Season One enjoys a very nice digitally shot show, complete with a glossy look that shines and looks as polished as it can be. Unlike the movies, The Purge: Season One has a lot of time in the sunlight as well, which gives us plenty of fine details to marvel at. That’s not to say that the show doesn’t go into the night time (it is a movie about the The Purge), but both lighting locations handles the detail levels and coloring quite well. The series looks like many USA network shows do, with bright highlights in the daylight, and a more dim and grim look during the night. Primary colors pop through such as the paint on purge participants gear, or the bright light of a spotlight, but other than that the night time shots really are grim and tinged with earth tones and gold. There’s some mild crush and some mild banding, but digital artifacting is kept to a bare minimum for the most part, allowing the digital show to really look good.




Audio:

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track for The Purge: Season One is quite a solid one for a TV show. Dialog is crisp and cleanly replicated in the front of the room, while the dynamics are wide enough to accommodate the intense action oriented nature of the show. Surrounds get a goodly amount of activity with the throbbing score, as well as some of the little nuances such as a dragging axe blade on the ground, or the rumble of a car bleeding in through the rear end of the room. LFE is tight and punchy, with a nice rumble associated to many of the more action oriented bits of the film. Bullets fly, cars crash, and the sickening thud of something whacking a human body creates a very nice low end to enjoy. Very solid all the way across the board and should please fans of the movie, who were used to a very robust audio mix in all of The Purge films to date.





Extras:

• A Conversation with Cast and Crew
• Deleted Scenes
• Costumes and Props
• Anatomy of a Scene - Featurette
• Table Read - Featurette

Final Score: ​

The Purge: Season One fits in nicely with the them of the Blumhouse horror movies quite well, pushing forward themes of inequality, hate, racism and of course the classic “strangers pushed together in order to survive” as we’ve seen unfold over the 4 films. Helmed by the writer of all 4 films (and director of the first 3), the series fits in seamlessly with the tone and feel of the first few films, but also carries over some of the heavy handed politics and preaching that the last two films (especially the prequel) were plagued with, which limited its entertainment value for myself personally. It’s a solid enough show, but I’m not deadly certain how it will play out with multiple seasons (season 2 is supposed to come out in 2019 sometime), but it’s entertaining enough as horror/slasher TV shows are something that you don’t see on TV that often, and as a horror nut I’ll take em where I can get em. Solid rental in my opinion.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Gabriel Chavarria, Hannah Emily Anderson, Jessica Garza, Colin Woodell, Lee Tergesen, Amanda Warren, Lili Simmons
Created by: James DeMonaco
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Universal
Rated: TV-MA
Runtime: 425 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: January 8th, 2019

Image

• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Solid Rental

 

[Todd Anderson]

Interesting... I had no idea this had been made into a TV show. Looks like it airs on USA?

 

[Michael Scott]

yup

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Will check it once on amazon prime/netflix.

 

[Valerius Walls]

Are there any trailers on this Blu-Ray? Sometimes TV shows can be confusing. But are there any trailers on the disc?

 

[Michael Scott]

Are there any trailers on this Blu-Ray? Sometimes TV shows can be confusing. But are there any trailers on the disc?

I don't have the discs in front of me, but according to my notes there were none ON the disc, but there might have been the standard streaming ones that go up in front of Universal titles (universal usually only streams their starting trailers, but I can't remember if they did for a TV show or not)

 

[Valerius Walls]

They did. I remember some of the House MD seasons having them.