With a worldwide box office of more than a half-billion dollars, The Purge franchise has become one of the top horror franchises in film history, with many reviewers wowed by the concept of the series and differentiating on the execution. With five films and a TV show (and another film possibly in the works), the series seems unstoppable. The franchise's main concept taps into underlying tensions throughout America. The vast differences between the films are largely due to the ever-changing casts, including actors, writers, and directors, so that each film has its own unique commentary, sometimes getting right at the nerve of social issues that seem to be best discussed in fictional worlds' metaphors and parables.
Acclaimed film and television critics and horror scholars such as Dale Bailey, Jason V. Brock, Chesya Burke, Lisa Morton, Katherine A. Troyer, and Kevin J. Wetmore give a wide range of analyses of just what The Purge films are saying about modern-day America and the world. Essays in the collection examine politics, violence, Trump, Freud, class issues, feminism, race, and more.

Writer and actor Ron Riekki has won several screenplay awards including best sci-fi/fantasy from the International Family Film Festival, best comedy from the Los Angeles Film Awards and the Nuclear Pen Award from the GenreBlast Film Festival. Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., is a professional actor and director whose previous books have covered topics ranging from Star Wars to Renaissance faires. He is a professor and chair of the theater department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

Table of Contents


Introduction: Cyclical Trauma and the Purge Series' Gun Fetish

Ron Riekki

Producing The Purge: An Industrial History of Blumhouse's Most Politically Charged Franchise

Todd K. Platts

The Purge as Panopticon: Screen, Self, and Other

Dale Bailey

Trump's Purge of Decency: How Donald Trump's Legacy Opens the Door for the Purge Series

Chesya Burke

The Greatest Danger Lies Within: A Lesson from The Purge

Michelle Leigh Gompf

The Uncanny Horror of The Purge: Freud and the Carnivalesque

Paul J. Patterson

"This is our home": The Nostalgic Horror of The Purge (2013)

Katherine A. Troyer

Preventing a Revolution: The Purge and The Hunger Games

Valerie L. Guyant

Purging ­Hyper-Invisibility: The First Purge and the Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Mattius Rischard

The Moral Foundation of The Purge: Moral Decisions, Disengagement, and Emotions

Mark Alberta and Steve Krahnke

Eat the Rich: Class Consumption, Politicoreligious Identity, and the Purge Series

Jason V. Brock

"Thank God I'm a feminist": Centralized Patriarchal Capitalism and Fractured Women's Resistance in The Purge TV Show

Lauren Gilmore

Fear of a Black Staten Island: The First Purge

Brian Brems

"You're on your own now": How the Art of the Haunted Attraction Transforms and Extends Audience Experience of The Purge Franchise

Lisa Morton

Thank You for Your Sacrifice: Ritual and Sacrifice in The Purge Universe

Brandon R. Grafius

Exploring American Anti-/Racism and Black Female Representation in The Purge TV Series (2018-2019)

Tiffany A. Bryant

Purging the Surplus: Precarity in The Purge Franchise

Melissa C. Macero

American Horror Stories: Lehman Brothers, the Housing Crisis, and The Purge

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns

Afterword: What Is America? or, the Entertainment Is the Warning

Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.

About the Contributors

Index