This would be a whole lot funnier if he hadn’t won. THE PURGE as a franchise didn’t exactly hit the ground running – the first movie was dull and clunky and not the least bit scary – but the franchise came into its own with the sequels. ANARCHY was angry and cuttingly satirical in addition to being a really tense thriller, and this trend continues with ELECTION YEAR, the horror for our troubled and uncertain times. It works really well as a chase movie, and while the villains are cartoony (they probably didn’t need the chief henchman to have “White Power” emblazoned across his body armour – the head tattoos were enough) but sometimes so are villains in the real world. Mostly the subtext is a hard-hitting accompaniment to some hardcore horror-action shootouts and some memorable imagery. Expect this franchise to have quite a life over the next few years, as long as Mad Max-meets-Dirty Harry Frank Grillo hangs around, and unless the filmmakers consider their battle a lost cause. SSP