Get A Thrilling New Look At The Forever Purge

After four movies and a TV series, The Purge is coming to an end with one final film — The Forever Purge. With an expected release date of July 9, 2021, fans of The Purge are excited to find out everything they can about the last entry in the series.

The first The Purge movie came out back in June of 2013 in what were, it's safe to say, very different times, both cinematically and literally. 2013 was the year of the third and final Iron Man movie, Zack Snyder's DCEU career began with Man of Steel, and Frozen taught us all to let it go. Back then, The Purge was a frightening look at an alternate-universe, dystopian America — one taken over by a totalitarian regime which sanctions lawlessness for 12 hours, once a year.

Eight years later, The Purge has gone from horrifying fantasy to horrifying analog for reality. But, of course, if you're in the business of making Purge movies, you try not to stand still while the real world changes around you. You have to adapt and continue the story in a way that resonates. And over the course of the Purge franchise we've watched the films tackle racism, income inequality, and even presidential elections. In fact, the last Purge movie in the timeline so far ended with violence breaking out over the results of an election.

So what have we learned from the latest image of The Forever Purge?

This new look at The Forever Purge from TotalFilm shows, as you might come to expect from The Purge, violent insurrection in the streets. We can see a man in a ski mask in the foreground and multiple men attacking an armored vehicle in the background. There appears to be at least one man in military fatigues and multiple people without masks reacting to an off-screen explosion. The big question is: is this a Purge night or is this just all-out, ongoing war?

"It's an amazing story of Latinos and Americans coming together to overcome despair and evil," says director Everardo Gout in the accompanying article. The Purge often focuses on how race impacts people's experience with the annual night of mayhem, and there's often a kind of hopelessness to the franchise because there's always another Purge on the horizon. It's possible that The Forever Purge might actually end the entire story on a hopeful note.

Unsurprisingly, there's a focus in this final film on clarifying the message of the franchise, which has always been about vigilante violence in a fascist America. According to Gout, Purge creator/writer James DeMonaco "wants to set the record straight" on his feelings about his own movies. "It's dystopian, but he's trying to get us to look in the mirror," says Gout. "It makes you think, '$#@!, if I get pushed into a corner, would I do the same?' Once you open that door, how do you close it again?"

What will happen in the final film? Will the open door find its way shut? We'll find out when The Forever Purge bows on July 9, 2021.