Last summer’s The Purge became a word-of-mouth success, grossing $89 million on a miniscule $3 million budget and making a sequel all but inevitable. Luckily, returning writer-director James DeMonaco appears to be changing things up in The Purge: Anarchy, shifting the focus from an upper-class family fending off masked intruders to a group of city dwellers attempting to survive an all-out war encouraged by the authorities.
The latest trailer for the thriller delves a little deeper into what audiences can expect from Anarchy – and I have to say, it looks absolutely nuts. A creepy woman auctioning off captives for wealthy Purgers to hunt, flamethrowers, gatling guns, bodies hanging from buildings, military teams breaking into a house to murder its occupants, and Frank Grillo being a total badass. The Purge: Anarchy has it all.
In addition to Grillo, whose character is evidently hunting the man he believes to be responsible for the death of his young son, The Purge: Anarchy stars Carmen Ejogo, Zach Gilford, Kiele Sanchez, Zoe Soul, Michael K. Williams, Justina Machado and Nicholas Gonzalez. Intriguingly, Edwin Hodge, the Bloody Stranger in the first Purge, has a supporting role in this sequel, so it looks like we’ll get to see all the chaos he was running from when we first met the character in the first film.
Speaking of familiar faces, Lena Headey’s voice can be heard at the end of the trailer – isn’t this movie set on the same night as the first film? Perhaps she’s there just to jog viewers’ memories and won’t actually play a part in Anarchy. Or maybe DeMonaco has a surprise planned for fans of the first movie. We’ll just have to wait and see. Luckily, there’s not too much time left before the movie releases – The Purge: Anarchy breaks loose on July 18th.
