Bummed about The First Purge. I really liked the main guy, and I appreciated the effort to make the movie more grounded and spend more time developing the characters to be less paper-thin (well, on the good guy side). And I reaaaaaally don't want to say this is the weakest movie of the 4, but the best I could probably say is it's on par with the weakest of the first three, Election Day and about that same 2/4 stars, just ok film.
The problem is that while the first half is interesting and plays like a low-scale people drama, the second half sucks tbh. The action is zzzzzzzzzz, the pacing is zzzzz, there's no real major villains, there's a bunch of cheap deaths, and the ending is kinda ok and not particularly satisfying. The second half doesn't do anything at all with all the local characters it builds up which is a huge shame. It almost feels like the director is good at drama but can't direct an action/thriller for the life of him and the second half feels directed by Mr. Average generically bland.
I'd have loved to see a movie like this directed by The Raid kinda director.
Also I saw a lot of people critizing how not.subtle.at.all the movie is with all the KKK masks and Church shootings and people dressed as POLICE beating up a BLACK MAN, etc...and while it didn't bug me, it does make the movie feel a lot less smart than the message it's trying to get across, which is a shame because the message beneath the Purge movies, aka the goal of right wing racists & supremacists is to do everything they can to bring down minorities through the veil of policies for the better america, it's an important message. But yeah, it's delivered in a way that I literally heard people walk out yelling "SJW WET DREAM MOVIE HERE" :\
It's an ok film, but yeah, should've been a much better film. 2nd Purge movie is still the best as a pure action movie and then the 1st one for being an interesting concept, but 3/4 are pretty weak.
