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The Purging Hour
R0 - America - Ruthless Studios / MVD Visual Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (28th September 2016). |
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The Film
 The Purging Hour is the "found footage" account of the fate that befell the Diaz family – dad Bruce (Steve Jacques), mom Jennifer (Cara O'Brien), daughter Kacie (Alana Chester), son Manny (David Mendoza), and Kacie's boyfriend Mark (Tomas Decurgez) – who disappeared shortly after moving into their new home in the ski resort town of Mammoth Mountain, California. Without any substantial evidence, the case went cold, but the discovery of this footage on the "dark web" has led to plenty of speculation calling into question the character of each of the victims, the motivations of local law enforcement and business officials, their handling of other supposedly unrelated disappearances, and the less-discussed aspects of the area's local lore. Bruce tries to engender the same enthusiasm he feels for the move and the locale in his stressed wife, his withdrawn son, and his smartass daughter while trying to bond with her boyfriend by giving him a hard time. Jennifer and Kacie have not been getting on, nor does she particularly like Mark, and she resents her husband for trying to keep things friendly. Kacie is heading for college in three months but still feels the need to remind her parents that they are lame, moan about the move, and may possibly be planning to break up with Mark who is not following her to college. Mark has little direction in life, and Bruce's attempts to wring any details about Mark's interests and plans have the opposite effect and may even feel condescending. Solitary Manny still has an imaginary friend and he is more interested in looking through the home movie camera than the mountain trails his father wants to explore with him. As the family settle in for the night, with the grudging acquiescence of Jennifer about Mark staying the night down on the couch, the thick fog that surrounds the house, sudden power outages, and loud crashing sounds have the family starting to believe that someone or something is trying to get inside or may already be there. There is one single chilling image in the whole of The Purging Hour. As Bruce opens the front door to go check the fuses, we see a slightly hunched silhouette within the thick fog. It is an image on par with similar ones in John Carpenter's The Fog (and betters in its utter simplicity anything in that film's abortion of a remake). The film's choice of title seems odd and opportunistic for a "found footage" film, but what works for this film is all of the possibilities posited or even hinted at by the contemporary interviews with family, friends, police, and the like, as well as the spins these put on the tensions between the characters. Bruce's sister believes Jennifer responsible for what happened to the family, revealing her suspicions about the woman's depression and her distant treatment of the children as they were growing up. Bruce's former co-worker calls Kacie a druggie and Manny a wierdo. Jennifer's best friend blames Bruce for squelching Jennifer's ambitions to be a model and actress. Mark's high school friend believes that he may not have been joking all of the times when he said he would kill his girlfriend if she cheated on him (and described the ways he would do it). Kacie's friend believes they were murdered by intruders. A conspiracy writer incoherently tries to tie in the fate of the Diaz family to other disappearances, and we have testimony from tourists and resort workers about strange sights and sounds in the night fog while local kids tell of a yearly ritual they jokingly carry out to drive away the spirit of a woman who drowned her two children and committed suicide. The mayor and other local official dissemble. It may indeed have been some purge by town's well-to-do white adults or their teenagers, or the title may indeed be opportunistic. The acting is relatively good with the usual inanities and broadness of character stemming from improvisation and ad-libbing, but the film really offers up nothing that novel for the "found footage" and would be utterly uninteresting even with the usual frantic climactic confusion. If not for the talking heads suggesting additional layers of backstory to what might just have been the perfect storm of family dysfunction – and also take a chunk out of the eighty-minute running time – it would have held little interest as an example of the subgenre, and the openness of the ending is just as unsatisfactory as usual. The Purging Hour is ultimately not a bad "found footage" flick, just a painlessly unexceptional one. 
Video
MVD's single-layer DVD gets the job done with the combination of HD and DV sources (the "found footage" is in 1.33:1 pillarbox and the interviews are 1.78:1) and the various digitally-created tape noise and damage. It is not a pretty film nor is it meant to be. 
Audio
The sole audio option is an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track that fits the found footage aesthetic (more so than the manipulative 5.1 tracks on the more mainstream examples of the subgenre). 
Extras
There are no extras. 
Overall
The Purging Hour is ultimately not a bad "found footage" flick, just a painlessly unexceptional one. 
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