The Purge (2013)

A whole country loses its mind for one night, and the movie watches it through a peephole. The idea is giant and nasty, and then James DeMonaco spends 85 minutes inside one house in a gated cul-de-sac. Ethan Hawke plays James, a guy who got rich selling security systems to scared neighbors, and the best irony is how useless his product is once someone outside gets patient. Rhys Wakefield is the real find as the leader of the masked group, a grinning prep-school type in a blazer who asks to be let in like he’s picking somebody up for a dance. The movie becomes a dark game of who’s behind which door, with characters making terrible choices on cue. The kids are written as plot devices. It made $89.3 million worldwide on a reported $3M, and a C CinemaScore says audiences felt shortchanged. A 3.9 because the premise deserved a much bigger movie than this one. $86.27 says you look up what a home security system actually costs before bed and close the tab fast.

What works: Rhys Wakefield’s polite, grinning menace is creepy, and the premise is a genuinely sharp idea.

What doesn’t: A huge idea gets shrunk down to a routine home invasion, and the characters only make dumb choices to keep it going.

Who it’s for: Grown-up horror fans curious where the franchise started, before the sequels took it to the streets.