The First Purge: Just Experimenting

The fourth entry in the franchise, The First Purge takes us back to the first experimental Purge on Stanton Island. Let's be blunt, your enjoyment of this movie is going to come down to if you enjoyed the other films or not. This is very much along the same lines of Anarchy and Election Day. Personally I enjoyed those two a lot more than the original Purge, so I enjoy this latest entry too. However, there are some issues I had with the film that drag it down a little. 
First and foremost, I have to give credit to this film taking a good amount of time to do some character building. We get time to learn about all our main characters as well as the villains for a good 20 to 30 minutes. It is nice to be invested in charcters before the warning message and siren ring out. Also, it is nice to see people do other crimes that aren't murder in the movie. It makes sense that people would have sex outside, or try to rob and loot, instead of just mass murder across the region. 
However, there are some lingering problems throughout the movie. For one the political messages are a bit heavy handed in this, not enough to be terribly distracting, but certainly laid on thick. Also, the lack of a good payoff for the villain Skeletor is rather dissapointing. He is built up from the beginning and just forgotten about for a long time. Also, some of the special effects, namely the blood, looks way too cgi for my tastes. 
Despite these issues, it is still an enjoyable ride, and it is easy to pull for the characters, and their attempts at redemption. It also gives easily hateable villains that you can root hard to see get taken down. Overall, this is an enjoyable entry that will please fans of the franchise.
3/5