Editorials
Why ‘The Purge’s’ Disappointment Was Actually the Smartest Thing About It
From the moment the concept was announced, it was all but guaranteed that The Purge was going to be a hit at the box office. Set in the not-too-distant future, the film promised to introduce a world wherein all crime, including murder, was made legal for 12-hours each year, and audiences came out in droves to witness all the madness. Made on a budget of just $3 million, the James DeMonaco-directed film pulled in 10x that in its first weekend alone, going on to gross a worldwide total of nearly $90 million.
Per Wikipedia, “It was the lowest budget film to hit the top of the box office charts since 1988.”
Impressive numbers aside, the reception from fans and critics alike was decidedly lukewarm. Those who didn’t love the movie all had their different reasons as to why, though the most common viewpoint was that The Purge just didn’t live up to its premise. And let’s be real here: it totally didn’t.
The film centers on the Sandin family, the most well-off residents in their town’s most well-off community. On the night of the annual Purge, 2022, an injured stranger is invited into the Sandin home by young son Charlie, setting off a chain of events that literally brings the chaos of the streets directly into their home. Masked maniacs are outside the door, and they want in.
When all is said and done, The Purge‘s high concept set-up turns out to be fancy packaging for what is ultimately, as the above synopsis suggests, a fairly traditional home invasion film. What promised to be a boldly original franchise was launched with a movie that didn’t really feel all that original, and it’s easy to see why that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way back in 2013. Mind you, it is my personal opinion that The Purge is a damn good home invasion film, but it’s a home invasion film all the same. We spend the whole movie locked inside a house with one family, provided only with very brief glimpses of the much larger universe established by the premise – mostly via news footage from Purges past.
But is that a problem? Or was that actually its smartest quality?
I realize that I’m probably praising the franchise for what is essentially a happy accident, as the reason why The Purge didn’t go for broke right out of the gate was likely because the budget just wasn’t there, but I’m of the mind that the film’s restraint is what makes it such a pitch perfect franchise-starter. Giving us the tiniest sampling of the concept, The Purge leaves you wanting so much more, and in doing so it brilliantly set the stage for bigger (and perhaps better) sequels. The appropriately titled The Purge: Anarchy, released in 2014, was made on a budget nearly four-times higher than the first one, allowing James DeMonaco to sell us on the same promise… but deliver everything we wanted the first time around.
And you better believe that tactic, whether or not it was the plan all along, worked like a charm. Worldwide, Anarchy pulled in even more money than The Purge, proving that audiences were only made hungrier by the first film’s perceived waste of the futuristic premise. The sequel managed to get us excited about the idea of the franchise all over again, and since it took us out into the streets and let us witness all the brutal chaos we hoped to see back in 2013, it was a hit both critically and financially.
Horror franchises, well, they just don’t get much smarter than this one.
So was the The Purge a let-down? If it was back when it was released, I’m fairly certain many people who felt that way would feel differently if they revisited it in the present. Armed with the knowledge that The Purge is merely an appetizer for the main courses that are The Purge: Anarchy, The Purge: Election Year, and The Purge: Whatever They Cook Up Next, it’s a whole lot easier to appreciate it for what it is rather than hold a grudge against it for not quite being what you wanted it to be.
My advice? Revisit The Purge. It’s a damn good movie and a brilliant franchise launching pad.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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