Apparently the inexperienced director was very low key and un-director-like on set. Not sure why they decided to populate the cast with mostly bIacks and hire a bIack director for this, but it proved to be a huge failure of an experiment.

Actually MongoLloyd, on a budget of $13 mill it made $69 million domestically and anther $65 million worldwide...churning a decent profit for BlumHouse and Universal. They're even making a haunt for it at Universal's Halloween Horror Nights (part of the Blumhouse of Horrors II house)....

That said, don't foresee anymore of these in the near future, what with the Purge TV show premiering soon.

I see the numbers, yes, however, it's a bona fide sh!t sandwich and I'd suspect that any subsequent Purge titles won't draw like this one did, which owes the successful previous 3 for its box office. I'd be willing to bet the bulk of the box office was realized in the first 2 weeks before people realized how sh!tty the film was.

@MongoLloyd said:

I see the numbers, yes, however, it's a bona fide sh!t sandwich and I'd suspect that any subsequent Purge titles won't draw like this one did, which owes the successful previous 3 for its box office. I'd be willing to bet the bulk of the box office was realized in the first 2 weeks before people realized how sh!tty the film was.

On THAT I agree...a 5th Purge movie would surely tank given how WEAK this movie was...boo to Universal for giving some shmuck directorial reigns that doesn't know how to tell a story properly. Hopefully the show will be better.

@jorgito2001 said:

@MongoLloyd said:

boo to Universal for giving some shmuck directorial reigns that doesn't know how to tell a story properly.

That's exactly what happened. I know people who worked on this film.

I had read something about the director not knowing what he was doing...enlighten PLEASE!

I was told he was pretty ineffectual on set, that he was timid and just not assertive at all in the way a director needs to be. Generally speaking when they put an inexperienced director on a film, they have a strong DP who can at least set up scenes from a blocking standpoint, and/or they have a producer who calls a lot of the directing shots. Not sure if they had that dynamic on this film.

I watched about 5 minutes of this and had to stop because it's so awful. No doubt the criteria for putting this guy in the director's chair had more to do with "giving him a chance" than "this guy is a great director."

I must have seen a different movie. I didn't know about who they picked for the director, but I would like to say the movie (at least to me) was fascinating to watch since it chronicled how all of this got started. The political part of it is also what I also found interesting. Then of course when things didn't go the way they wanted, there was backup strictly for political reasons...in as such as to how things go in real life.

@thebarnman said:

I must have seen a different movie. I didn't know about who they picked for the director, but I would like to say the movie (at least to me) was fascinating to watch since it chronicled how all of this got started. The political part of it is also what I also found interesting. Then of course when things didn't go the way they wanted, there was backup strictly for political reasons...in as such as to how things go in real life.

I WILL say the politics getting involved & overall how the Purge got started made perfect sense...but the EXECUTION was bad! The worst was making the drugpin a "super hero" of some kind. lol

It's not as good as 2 and 3 but I definitely liked it more than part 1. This movie was about on par with the cable TV show.