Sanctioned mayhem in a future gone mad

When The Purge opened in cinemas last year, the horror movie created an industry sensation by grossing close to US$90 million worldwide - a vast return on the US$3 million it cost to make it.

Not surprisingly, then, plans for a sequel, The Purge: Anarchy, were almost immediately put into effect. With a budget of US$9 million, this second film is a somewhat more lavish production - but the raw-edged, hardcore grittiness of the first is still evident.

The Purge movies were the outcome of a conversation in a car between director-screenwriter James DeMonaco and his wife. After another driver cut them off on the highway - almost causing a potentially fatal accident - his wife was moved, in the heat of the moment, to wish aloud that there should be one day of the year where a person could kill anyone, with no repercussion.

DeMonaco took that as the framework for the original Purge, and ran with it. The film is set in a not-too-distance future, where a 12-hour overnight period is set aside for people to kill, maim, loot and rape as they wish, leaving victims no recourse to police or hospitals: the conceit here is that if people get all their aggression out on one night, peace will reign the rest of the time.

That first movie stars Ethan Hawke as a man who tries to protect his family from a gang of Purgers, with most of the action set in the family's home.