The purge - script coverage PDF

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What’s wrong with the purge? From the start: the film progresses super slowly. Many scenes have no need in the film. The wa-do-ge isn’t apparent in lots of scenes during the set-up. So many empty conversations with family members and neighbors—it is as though the screenwriters had to add 5 pages at the beginning of the script just to add them. The dialogue takes itself too seriously. At dinner, why does the daughter project in the way that she does? How does this progress the story? Moments like those take me out of the story, their lines don’t sound like something a real person would say. Many of these shots are super long throughout the movie. For example, the shots of the kid controlling the RC robot: way too long and without an apparent reason. I can only imagine that the script contains action lines spanning across half a page. Even more parts that are unneeded include when the mom goes on the treadmill, the dad doing work, the entire unfolding B plot. ¼ of the way in, the apparent B plot of the boyfriend sneaking into their house to convince the dad to let him date the daughter lacks substance and doesn’t make sense within the film’s nature. ¼ of the way in, it's also worth mentioning that with all this dialogue, there hasn’t been much character development. They’ve spent so much time explaining the purge–why it works, why it doesn’t, why it’s necessary–that they haven’t spent much time on the family at all. All I can say about the dad is that he’s great at selling security systems. The mom: she stays at home (I think?). The little brother seems both creepy, but sensitive to others, and tracks his vitals, which doesn’t really make sense. I know the most about the daughter who’s pouty, rebels against her parents and loves her boyfriend. I know nothing about any of their motives, desires or even flaws. At about the 27 minute mark, the catalyst takes place. The little brother opens the big security system to let in a random man screaming for help. This causes a house-wide panic and out of the middle of nowhere, the girl’s boyfriend pulls a gun out and tries to shoot the dad. This makes absolutely no sense. The writers didn’t build this moment up whatsoever and the entire event comes across as completely confusing. I was under the assumption that the boyfriend simply wanted to talk to the dad. This violent decision is super weird and a poor decision in the story. Then, he just dies and it’s over like that? Soon, the real plot is introduced when a group of purgers come to the family’s home and demand they return the random man that the little boy let into the house. If the man isn’t returned, they will break in and kill everyone. I’m not sure if this is the catalyst or the bad guys closing in? Either way, this film doesn’t really go by the 15 beats, as it's almost halfway through and we’re just learning about the bad guys who are also already closing in. The next 20 minutes go by so slowly. All it is is different members of the family going around the house and the bad guys wait outside. Lots of “writer’s convenience” going on here. I refuse to believe that the little boy would choose saving this random man over his own family, no matter how young he is. Nobody would do that, besides his character, which conveniently moves

the plot along. Another moment is: why is everyone in the family separated like a stereotypical horror movie? It barely makes sense that the dad would leave their makeshift shelter to find the random man, but why would the daughter force herself to go out alone and why would the mom leave the little boy alone too? All of this seems just for convenience so the writers could drum up some tension at all times. Onto the big action sequence around the 50 minute mark. Lots of writer mistakes here. The mom tells the little boy to turn his flashlight one way, then the dad says to turn the exact opposite and the kid is just spinning with the flashlight–super awkward. This moment of the family tying this random man up and torturing him is a crazy moment that wasn’t utilized to the best of their abilities. There is so much juxtaposition within the characters, yet they employed little dialogue to explore this. The only notable dialogue is when the daughter comes back and says “Nothing you do is ever going to be okay after tonight.” This is a weird line to say when thus far, the only thing his daughter has seen him do is shoot her boyfriend in self-defense. After this father-daughter moment, the random man decides to play hero and let the dad take him outside to the bad guys. This realization would’ve made a lot more sense if the dad had just had a touching moment with his family, since the random man’s reasoning for this change of heart was so the dad could save his children. It’s also worth noting that everyone has split up once again and ran off on their own for no reason. Writer’s convenience moment. This one is huge and I genuinely can’t get around it. So the family decides to fight the bad guys, but the way that they do this is to split up individually and take over certain areas of the house. Every single audience member should realize that no human family would make the decision to split up in this situation. The obvious answer is to all go into the basement, stock up on weapons and maybe barricade the door. This way, the children are protected and they have only one door of entry. I’m sure that this is a common theme among all horror movies, but the stupidity of the main heroes is a massive fault in this writing. After much consideration, it seems that the bad guys’ first introduction was the catalyst, and the next 40 odd minutes were the debate. This debate took so long that there isn’t much time left in the movie for the rest of the entire 15 beats. I realized that the second act truly began once the bag guys actually broke into the house? Even if that isn’t correct, it’s the only possibility that makes sense. The rest of the movie took so long that this whole sequence lasts 10 minutes. That’s right, 10 minutes of hiding, killing and action and then the neighbors come to save the day and it's over. Massive letdown. The trailer moments that we’ve all seen don’t really happen–we only see one shot of the daughter hiding/surviving, maybe one or two of the son, etc. A common theme in this movie is that the wants and needs of the characters are NOT apparent. The neighbors that had seemed to save the day ended up turning on the family to do the killing themselves. Their reasoning? The dad sold security systems to the whole neighborhood, in turn making a commission, and used that money to remodel their home. In the neighbors' eyes, this is “showing off your money” and is grounds for extreme hatred. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The writers clearly just wanted a twist and stretched the reasoning as far as

possible. The only good thing to come from the script is that the random man from earlier ends up saving the family from imminent death, which breaks the film into act 3. In the last act, the night plays out with no killing, the neighbors go home and the random man leaves after protecting the family all night. Pretty anticlimactic. In the end, none of the characters changed. Perhaps the daughter apologizing to her dad 10 minutes earlier for her boyfriend trying to kill him is the best we get. Besides that, nothing. We really had no flaws to begin with, so where was there room for transformation?...