The Forever Purge also puts the minority members of its cast front and center, their steadfast heroism a call to action to stand up against fascism, extremist ideology and racist violence worth listening to.

While no one is going to win an Academy Award for their efforts the collective authenticity of the primary cast is never in doubt, and as such caring about whether they live or die is surprisingly easy to do.

While I can’t say I was as energized by The Purge: Election Year as much as I was the two stories that came before it, I’m still fairly enthused by what it is DeMonaco is doing here, this third chapter in the saga a politically astute meat grinder that’s worthy of a look.

The Purge: Anarchy is an unapologetically violent exercise in sensationalistic mayhem, that fact is not up for debate, and for my part I’m fine with this, part of me even a tiny bit curious exactly where DeMonaco and company might be interested in taking things next.

Say what you will about either movement but the heart and soul of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party did bring about conversations about wealth disparity and cultural (and corporate) privilege in this country, those ideas taken to a grotesquely unsettling extreme in the world imagined by DeMonaco.