The sequel to "The Purge" promised to correct everything that was wrong with the first film and make the right moves in making the most of the ground-breaking concept of the The Purge event in the movie.

The Purge is a 12 hour window wherein the government suspends any form of law enforcement and even emergency services. It is, basically anarchy. It is a concept full of possibilities, but they wasted it in the first movie by reducing it into a home invasion theme. The only factor where The Purge plays is that there is no police to call.

The instant remedy to a home invasion fiasco-bring the protagonists outside. That's exactly what this film did. From Grantland:

"The car of that stowaway couple happened to run out of gas just as the Purge was getting under way, and they're just as weak and needy. They're all talky and openly desperate for Sergeant(Captain America's Frank Grillo) to get them out of jam after jam (a domestic drama gone wrong, the killer Mexicans around the corner, the punks in the traffic tunnel driving a car with a flamethrower). Sometimes they try self-defense. Mostly, it's 'Please, help us!'"

The action possibilities are expanded, but the vision of the film still falls flat and it is more of a festival of extreme stereotypes. The promise of director James DeMonaco that it's "800 times better" does not materialize with the sympathetic characters that he introduces.

Not to say that it's not better than the first, but one might think they finally get the idea. The 'sympathetic characters' still falls flat in their development (or lack thereof).

"DeMonaco is more interested in scenarios than in stocking them with human beings. Everybody here is a backstory in a T-shirt. It's the premise that's the hook, and its hook isn't terribly dissimilar from the moral apocalypse of the Saw series, where sadistic contraptions were supposed to punish and sometimes repunish the bad and the evil. "

There will be a third installment and hopefully, "The Purge" would be rife with the fruition of the possibilities they promise.