Back when its first entry was released, The Purge franchise was a breath of fresh air for the stagnant horror movie genre. As its went on, however, it devolved more and more into a series of tropes and closer to the action movie genre. This turned what was a fairly unique premise into a run-of-the-mill, conveyor belt of a movie franchise. Now, the first trailer for the final entry in the series, The Forever Purge, has finally been released, but it doesn't seem like the franchise will go out with a bang.

The film's premise goes completely against the franchise's rules, and in doing so feels like a forced way to continue what was already a tired series. Here's how The Forever Purge fittingly tries to keep its franchise going far beyond its deserved sell date.

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The trailer showcases the upcoming film's plot. It takes place directly after 2016's The Purge: Election Year, which concluded with the Purge being outlawed by the United States government as the event became more politically and socially opposed. However, this doesn't stop a group of ruffians from trying to enact their own flavor of the Purge upon a Mexican couple escaping from the cartel into Texas in The Forever Purge. The potential victims remind them that the Purge is over, but the group responds that their personal crusade is a "forever Purge" against the rich living in America.

This boring premise is immediately problematic for several reasons, with the film's status as the franchise's final entry being one of them. It begs the question of whether or not something like this, where criminals attempted to prolong the Purge, has happened before. If so, armed forces and emergency personnel should be ready to combat those trying to take advantage of the fracas. This "forever Purge" is therefore an illegitimate Purge, and thus feels like a cheap excuse to make another sequel that only feels tangentially related to the franchise.

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The fairly obvious attempt the movie makes in terms of class warfare and sociopolitical commentary looks particularly trite and was definitely done in a more original way in the aforementioned Election Year and the 2018 prequel The First Purge. The fact that The Forever Purge is somewhat tied to Mexico but doesn't even take place there is a particularly wasted opportunity.

A more natural and exciting new entry in the franchise would be to have it take place before Election Year, cementing that movie as the franchise's logical endpoint. Similarly, having it actually set in a foreign culture could do wonders to make it much more interesting and differentiate it from previous films. This works especially well if The Forever Purge continued the idea of going bigger than the sequels have continually done. If nothing else, the new locales would certainly spice things up from the cliché New York settings of most movies. Better yet, going smaller once again in a full circle call back to the first movie would be even better. Having a group of crooks trying to sneak in one last home invasion could possibly justify the story a bit better.

To be fair, it is a sort of manifestation of one of the movie's lines, which was "In Juarez, every day is the Purge!" This doesn't, however, validate the direction taken with the last sequel, which doesn't seem to even have the same spirit as its predecessors or the TV show. One great example of this is the fact that The Forever Purge seems to take place predominately during the daytime, whereas the threat of previous movies was heightened by the night/early morning setting. One idea for a final sequel, a heist movie, was eventually used in the second and final season of The Purge TV series, possibly explaining how forced this one sounds.

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