The annual legal-free killing spree, “The Purge,” is coming to Staten Island. Relax, it’s just a movie.
The next segment of the film series that sees people committing crimes like there’s no tomorrow one night a year — “The Purge,” “Anarchy” and “Election Year” — will be set on Staten Island, filmmaker James DeMonaco told Vulture.
The fourth movie, referred to by DeMonaco as “Island” reveals that the recurring cult-like ritual was actually born in the New York City borough. “Island” will flash back to the first-ever Purge, an experiment, and a pretty successful one at that.
“I was wondering how you get people to stay for the first Purge, and what they do is they start monetizing it,” DeMonaco said. “People from Staten Island can easily go to Brooklyn for the evening, so what they do is start promising very decent sums of money for the very poor people in the neighborhood. It becomes a monetization of murder and violence, incentivizing killing and keeping people around for them to be victims. So, you see the inception of how grotesque the idea of the Purge is, the manipulation upon the society. That’s where it becomes, sadly, I think, very topical right now with the current administration.”
DeMonaco, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, said that the cast, which hasn’t yet been revealed, will have a different racial breakdown than in past films (“It’s 90 percent black people,” he said) but added that he hopes it comes across as relatable as a story about killing, set in NYC, can be.
“[I] get a little daunted. Like, ‘What am I — the Italian guy from Staten Island — what am I bringing to this?’ But hopefully I’m telling the universal story,” he said.
The fourth “Purge” film is expected to hit theaters July 4, 2018.
