THE FIRST PURGE Director On Bringing Real-Life Horror to the Series
Mike Sprague
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This July, The Purge franchise hands the keys over to a new director for their prequel The First Purge. The new director is Gerard McMurray and recently he spoke about how he’s using real-life events to underscore the film’s themes of abuse of power and resistance.
“Right now we’re living in a time where people are waking up and seeing how things really are and are needing to stand up and voice their opinion,” McMurray told Deadline. “As a filmmaker, showing those images and putting it out there gave me a voice to acknowledge what was going on and bring some awareness and spark dialogue about it.”
He continues: “We see events that taking place in this country over the last year. I just try to use what was going on in the real world and trying to bring it into the film. I felt like horror films wrestle with the evils of real life, and that was one of the things I wanted to do with this film.”
And finally: “We’re fighting for real injustices [in the film]. The fact that it’s a genre horror film, it’s not real, but I still wanted pay homage [to Black Lives Matter] and do things I thought it would be great.”
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The film is directed by Gerard McMurray from a screenplay by James DeMonaco and stars Y’Lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade, Luna Lauren Velez and Marisa Tomei.
The First Purge begins July 4th, 2018.
Synopsis:
Behind every tradition lies a revolution. Next Independence Day, witness the rise of our country’s 12 hours of annual lawlessness. Welcome to the movement that began as a simple experiment: The First Purge. To push the crime rate below one percent for the rest of the year, the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) test a sociological theory that vents aggression for one night in one isolated community. But when the violence of oppressors meets the rage of the marginalized, the contagion will explode from the trial-city borders and spread across the nation.
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