By: Jillian Lachcik, Reporter

This past summer, a sequel to the action-horror film was made, called The Purge: Anarchy. However, since this movie was released, there have been multiple threats around the United States calling for a real-life purge to occur. This has made many wonder if they in fact are in danger. Honestly, they couldn’t be more safe than they are now, though.

Looking back at the thrilling scary movies of the past two years, there is one film at the top of many people’s lists: The Purge. The movie was released in May 2013, and is about an annual 12-hour period of time where all crime is legal, and all public services (police, hospitals, etc.) are suspended by the government.

From Louisville to Denver to Jacksonville, there have been multiple instances where some citizens have threatened to have violent attacks on their cities, their idea obviously coming from these films. However, events such as this could never be allowed by the United States laws nowadays. There are too many restrictions, rules, and laws that would have to be broken for the government to arrange an event like this, and the idea of a purge itself is absolutely ludicrous.

On August 15, there was somewhere around 15 to 20 brutal attacks in Louisville, Kentucky. There was a plethora of raging mobs that were robbing stores, destruction of other people’s houses, and violent attacks on other civilians. During those attacks, police had to be called from all over the state to control the situation.

Senior Linda Li says, “I heard about these attacks and couldn’t believe it at first; I didn’t think a film could inspire such events.”

Since the attacks, many new threats have risen and came about, but there is one thing that all of these reports are missing: a “real life purge” will never happen. In order for any of these threats to be a purge in real life, the government would have to arrange for all of these acts to be legal.

Sophomore Caitlyn Drazen says, “These acts of violence are terrible, but it doesn’t make sense. You can’t just have all these people running around hurting people and say that the government put it all together, because they didn’t.”

In the films, the government arranges the annual purge, and anyone can participate in it if they choose to do so. In order for any of these threats and attacks to make sense, they had to be in line with the films. Going on random, brutal, killing sprees is not at all what this film was about, and the government would never let anything like this happen.