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Unsurprisingly, the cheapo horror success The Purge, which earned $36.4 million on a $3 million budget this past weekend, will be getting a sequel. That was inevitable, pure profit is hard to resist. But what will a sequel for this movie look like, given its particularly ludicrous premise? Let's offer some suggestions.
For those unfamiliar with the setup of The Purge, here is a brief synopsis: In the year 2022, things are going pretty well in America. Crime is low and unemployment scarce, all supposedly owed to the annual Purge, a period of twelve hours when all crime, including murder, is legal. See, that half-day of unfettered freedom gets all the violent and bad urges out of Americans' systems, so the other 8,748 hours of the year can proceed peacefully. Of course that all goes haywire for one family, a wealthy clan that has made its money providing fortress-like home security systems for rich people who want to keep the Purge out of their homes. Chaos ensues, mayhem most foul goes down, and I guess we all learn some sort of lesson about America and crime and ill-gotten gains, or something.
Here's a SPOILER ALERT for those who don't want to know how the movie ends. Everyone ready? OK, here we go. The movie ends with the invaders repelled, but the patriarch, played by Ethan Hawke, is murdered for his Purge profiteering. The rest of the family is relatively OK, but dad's gone. So the sequel would, presumably, take up with different characters, right? I mean, are they going to subject the kids to another onslaught of humanity at its worst? Let's hope not. And let's assume that they'll have to up the ante somehow. Doing another straight-up Purge night gone wrong wouldn't really suffice. So they'll need to raise the stakes.