How to watch the “Purge” movies in order, from “First Purge” to “Forever Purge”

Key Points

• The Purge is a horror franchise about a dystopian America where all crime is allowed for a 12-hour period once a year.

• The Blumhouse franchise consists of five films, released between 2013 and 2021.

• A sixth entry has been in development for several years.

The Purge began as a low-budget home invasion thriller with a killer premise: What if once a year, all crime was legal for 12 horrifying hours?

Released in 2013, the Blumhouse feature raked in nearly $90 million on a $3 million budget, spawning four sequels and a TV series, not to mention over $500 million at the worldwide box office.

Those are impressive numbers for a franchise as violent, satirical, and political as The Purge, which depicts a vision of America overseen by an authoritarian government that utilizes the Purge to thin out poor and marginalized communities to enrich the elite. It’s never been subtle about its core message: no war but class war.

It’s been four years since the franchise’s latest entry, 2021’s The Forever Purge, and talk of a sixth entry has percolated since, especially amid the country’s increasingly volatile political landscape.

James DeMonaco, who wrote all five Purge films and directed the first three, even detailed his idea for a sixth film. “[The Purge 6] is about the remapping of America based on ideology, sexuality and religion, so that the states are broken down,” he said in a 2023 interview. “You have your Black state, you have your gay state, you have your white evangelical state. And it’s really a broken country.”

As we wait to see whether another sequel is forthcoming, here’s a guide to the franchise, including how to watch the Purge movies in order.

01 of 05

The Purge (2013)

The Purge‘s titular night of terror is already an established American tradition in the franchise’s first film, which unfolds in 2022, roughly eight years after an economic collapse led to the rise of the nationalist “New Founding Fathers of America.” It was this new regime that introduced the Purge, a 12-hour period in which emergency services are suspended and all crime is legal.

Crime and unemployment are at record lows in this alternate reality, but, as you might imagine, it’s the poor and marginalized who are most impacted by the Purge. The wealthy, like protagonist James Sandin (Ethan Hawke), are safe and sound thanks to cutting-edge security systems.

The franchise’s first film starts small, operating as a home invasion thriller in which James and his well-to-do family must decide whether to help a man (Edwin Hodge) who shows up at their home begging for help, with maniacal Purgers on his tail.

That intimacy, as EW’s critic noted in his review, doesn’t serve the political and social implications of the premise, as the movie’s “big ideas about race, class, and social violence get trumped by its desire to hit genre beats.”

But The Purge, made for just $3 million, is more a proof of concept than anything. It wouldn’t be long before DeMonaco had the opportunity to take his vision out to the streets.

02 of 05

The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

The Purge: Anarchy is bursting with all the twisted ideas DeMonaco didn’t have the resources to explore in his previous film.

Set in 2023, one year after the events of The Purge, the sequel thrusts audiences into the streets of Los Angeles, where masked sickos string up the dead and leering elites auction off the poor to the highest bidder.

The vast ensemble includes an off-duty cop (Frank Grillo) seeking revenge for his son’s death, a married couple (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) whose broken-down car leaves them stranded in Purge territory, and an organizer (Michael K. Williams) leading an anti-Purge resistance group. But most compelling is Big Daddy (Jack Conley), the leader of a heavily-armed death squad with some distressing ties to the government.

Fans of John Carpenter’s anti-establishment films Escape From New York and They Live will find plenty to like here. DeMonaco even told Entertainment Weekly that he penned the script while listening to Ennio Morricone’s score of 1982’s The Thing.

03 of 05

The Purge: Election Year (2016)

The Purge: Election Year jumps nearly two decades into the future, centering on Charlene Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell), a presidential hopeful with plans to abolish the Purge. But it’s Purge Night in 2040, and a gaggle of neo-Nazis has been ordered to ensure she doesn’t survive until morning.

The “best and pulpiest Purge yet,” Election Year arrived just months before Donald Trump was elected U.S. President for the first time. As you might expect, there’s no shortage of political satire baked into its ultraviolence, but its exploitative pleasures transcend its real-world parallels.

“The film’s violence (and there’s a ton of it, so consider yourself warned) is stunningly art-directed,” reads EW’s review. “In one scene, the steps of D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial are lit up with bonfires and littered with dead bodies, while its white columns are graffiti’d with the word P-U-R-G-E scrawled in blood. In another, a rabid mob of female looters sport cutesy masks and are tarted up in skimpy corsets while wielding bedazzled machine guns. It’s like watching Miley Cyrus skipping through Dante’s Inferno.”

04 of 05

The First Purge (2018)

As its title implies, The First Purge is a prequel about the origins of the Purge after the New Founding Fathers of America took power. It turns out the Purge was the idea of a well-intentioned psychologist (Marisa Tomei) who, as DeMonaco put it to EW, “feels that a societal catharsis would be good.”

But, he added, “She doesn’t see that the government, the NFFA, who’s putting it into effect has a completely different agenda.”

The Purge, then, begins as an experiment in 2016 on Staten Island, where impoverished residents are paid to participate. “There’s a monetary component, meaning if you participate, and you stay on the island during the Purge, you will receive a $5,000 stipend,” DeMonaco explained. “So, mostly, poor people stay and rich people leave.”

While DeMonaco wrote the script, The First Purge is directed by Gerard McMurray, who delivered the most racially-charged Purge movie to date. When the NFFA sends its own goons onto the island in the hopes of cranking up the violence, the troops are dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes and uniforms resembling those of Third Reich soldiers. Subtle, this is not.

05 of 05

The Forever Purge (2021)

The Forever Purge, released in 2021, is set eight years after the events of The Purge: Election Year, which concluded with Charlene Roan winning the presidency. That happy ending led to the abolishment of the Purge, but not for long. By 2048, the NFFA is back in power and the Purge reinstated.

But now, the Purge has been indefinitely extended in an effort to “racially purify” America. “All rules are off, all bets are off, and America is the Purge,” said producer and Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum in a chat with EW. “It’s not just the Purge for 12 hours a year, it’s the Purge forever.”

Directed by Everardo Valerio Gout, this Texas-set entry follows a group of survivors who attempt to flee to Mexico. “No joke, I wanted to do a love story,” DeMonaco, who wrote the script, told EW. “Or to do my horror-love story with this couple coming up from Mexico and searching to see if the American dream still existed.”

He continued, “Then I was like, okay, that’s clearly not enough for the movie. It was like, how do I shake this up? Then [I thought of] this idea of, well, the Purge people would stop listening to any rules. They’re not even going to listen to when the sirens [announce] it’s over. The idea that it’s just out of control, you can’t contain this violence, anymore. That’s what got me psyched, and coupling that with this love story, and this idea of searching for the American dream all came together.”

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The Purge movies in order by release date:

2. The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

3. The Purge: Election Year (2016)

The Purge movies in chronological order:

3. The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

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4. The Purge: Election Year (2016)

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