Despite the movie’s blundering detour it does get back on track just in time to provide an unexpected satisfying ending.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 24, 2022

The movie's attempts at social commentary about the decline of U.S. culture and increasingly extreme politics are overshadowed by how DeMonaco revels in morbid ultra-violence.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 11, 2022

...it will leave a nasty taste in your mouth, making you wince and jump out of your seat.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 25, 2021

The scope has increased, but perhaps too much; three separate stories interact yet still require their own individual outcomes.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Dec 4, 2020

A lot of human elements such as fear, anger, revenge and heroism are exploited in ways not many movies of this kind have been able to perfect.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 20, 2020

Frank Grillo makes for a grizzled and unsettling presence.

| Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 20, 2020

I did enjoy this more than the first, and even more than I thought I would as a whole. By the halfway mark, I actually started caring about the well-being of the main characters in a way I didn't by that point in the first one.

| Jul 17, 2020

A modern interpretation of those grim, gritty, exploitation style revenge thrillers from the late 1970s and early 1980s.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 7, 2020

As outrageous as the concept initially seems, Anarchy holds a mirror up to American society with a bite that is rare in horror cinema nowadays.

| Original Score: 4.7/5 | Jan 8, 2020

The Purge: Anarchy is a quick, cheap exploitation movie that intends to fill seats with promises of over-the-top violence. But it delivers something much more subversive and interesting.

| Jan 8, 2020

The world-building of this movie is so lazy that anything built upon it cannot be of any substance, because the foundation is too weak.

| Dec 16, 2019

People will continue to pass these off as silly movies, though, they are much more than that. They reveal the beating, ugly heart of America.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 7, 2019

The Purge: Anarchy is little more than a pointless exercise in bad taste featuring bland protagonists and ugly antagonists caught up in an endless cycle of brutality.

| Mar 5, 2019

The ensuing scenes of flight and fight are thrilling, but the bigger picture that slowly emerges of a world in which the rich remorselessly prey on the poor is scarier still.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 2, 2019

The social conscience is a little more palatable here, but it still feels tacked on in a film that wears out its welcome long before the final act.

| Original Score: C- | Feb 1, 2019

It is hard not to get behind the fun of The Purge: Anarchy. This is a sick, twisted world full of evil and petty common folk finally unleashing the beast that lies in all of us.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Oct 23, 2018

Movies like this don't need to be smart, they just need to be entertaining, and The Purge: Anarchy is, if nothing else, entertaining.

| Oct 19, 2017

I'm completely on board with the horror action, but this sequel really points out the glaring thematic flaws.

| Original Score: C | Sep 2, 2017

The questions beneath it linger longer than the slightly greasy joy of watching bad people pay for our collective sins.

| May 16, 2017

Progressive allegory so stupid it comes across as conservative parody.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 14, 2016