The Purge: Election Year
Universal Pictures | Release Date: July 1, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
55
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
13
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
The Seattle TimesKatie WalshJun 30, 2016
The biggest, baddest, berserkest Purge so far. Read full review
80
TheWrapDave WhiteJun 29, 2016
Grillo is exactly the right man for this role, the thoughtful tough guy who can pull bullets out of his own body and who always looks like he needs a shower, but who can’t stop for such indulgences until he knows everyone else is safe. And the ensemble around him forms a tight, empathic unit. We want the Purge to keep going; we also want this crew to smack it down hard. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanJun 29, 2016
You’d think the concept would now be wearing thin, but Election Year, which feels like the final chapter in a trilogy...is the best “Purge” film yet. The action is excitingly sustained in a way that it wasn’t in the previous two, and the political dimension, while crude as hell, exerts a brute-force entertainment value. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJustin LoweJun 29, 2016
DeMonaco has further upped his game with the third installment by working closely with franchise cinematographer Jacques Jouffret to design rewardingly more complex action sequences and well-focused set pieces that are both efficiently executed and visually engaging. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJun 30, 2016
It's nice to see an action movie take more than a passing interest in where our country is at the moment, and then exaggerating that moment into the realm of shrewd exploitation. To wit: Any film combining an indictment of false religiosity with an indictment of violence-solves-violence political pandering in a single line of dialogue — "These weapons have been cleansed with holy water!" — is OK by me. Read full review
75
Rolling StoneDavid FearJun 30, 2016
You can be a pissed-off Tea Partier or an Occupy advocate and find something here to stoke your fat cat hatred; either way, catharsis is doled out not in a dusk-til-dawn homicidal free-for all but two harmless hours in a theater. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJun 29, 2016
If, on the other hand, it’s sleazy kicks you’re after, you’ll be in exploitation heaven. Because writer-director James DeMonaco’s third chapter in the thrill-kill vigilante franchise is the best and pulpiest Purge yet. Read full review
75
ConsequenceRandall ColburnJun 29, 2016
The film’s comical bluntness could also be construed as off putting, but to criticize that is to deprive yourself the joy of such pulp. And this is pulp, from the brazenness of its violence to the dull bite of its clunky dialogue. What Election Year offers isn’t nuanced satire, but rather a kind of catharsis, a release that’s not so far off from what the Purge itself purports to provide. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangJun 30, 2016
At times the experience of watching Election Year is a bit like scanning a few years’ worth of alarming headlines while someone sets off firecrackers under your desk. Black Lives Matter, drone warfare, local protests, home-grown militias, predatory capitalism, the Florida electorate, pop pop, bang bang. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJun 30, 2016
The Purge: Election Year takes itself just seriously enough to provide the expected measure of fun — a blend of aggression, release and relief. A lot of people die, but no one really gets hurt. Read full review
67
MTV NewsAmy NicholsonJul 14, 2016
DeMonaco makes small choices I admire. For once, no woman gets threatened with rape. Instead, ladies seem to be the aggressors, and as we cruise the streets of D.C. we see wives stabbing and incinerating husbands, or dancing around a tree strung with male corpses. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyJun 29, 2016
For all its flaws, Election Year has those baseline pleasures associated with violent American B-movies of the 1970s and ’80s — that mix of simplicity and scuzzy, juicy execution. Read full review
67
The Film StageJared MobarakJun 29, 2016
DeMonaco has his finger on the pulse of our struggle and has found a way to put it onscreen as all good horror does. Sure he and Jason Blum are making money, but you cannot deny they aren’t also forcing us to acknowledge the social science at play. Read full review
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