There’s something powerful in the way horror movies and thrillers are able to tap into the cultural fears of a given moment. Whether it’s the sexual politics of the 1980s slasher movie, or the torture porn explosion in the wake of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no other genre is so adept at saying, “Here’s what's on our minds right now, and it’s scaring the hell out of us.”


That’s the tradition writer-director James DeMonaco hopes to join with The Purge. A home invasion flick wrapped in Occupy-era themes and fears, it starts off strong but is ultimately neither scary nor smart enough to kick off the kind of thought-provoking conversations it so clearly wants to be part of.