The Purge

Given the country's overcrowded prisons, the U.S. government begins to allow 12-hour periods of time in which all illegal activity is legal. During one of these free-for-alls, a family must protect themselves from a home invasion.

The Purge arrives with an intriguing premise — a near-future America where all crime is legal for one night — but critics found it squanders that setup, collapsing into a generic home-invasion thriller before it can develop anything meaningful to say. The social satire and the genre mechanics never coexist comfortably, and audiences were similarly unimpressed.