James DeMonaco's 2013 dystopian horror film "The Purge" is a shabby affair, but possesses an intriguing premise: in the near future, the government has mandated that all crimes, including murder, are legal for a single night a year. The idea being that if everyone has a night to work out their darkest frustrations — to purge their evil — then they will be well-behaved the other 364 days out of the year. The wealthy tend to spend Purge Night locked away in their armored mansions, although in the first "Purge" movie, the bourgeois protagonists have their manse invaded regardless.

It wouldn't be until "The Purge: Anarchy" in 2014 that the political underpinnings of "The Purge" would become more explicit. That film takes place not in an opulent mansion, but among the impoverished, and how their small businesses — and very lives — are threatened by Purge Night. It seems the Purge was enacted as an explicit...