In 2013, the Purge was an intellectual exercise. DeMonaco recalled a chilling moment while driving with his wife that inspired his screenplay. Evidently, something startling happened to DeMonaco while driving the streets of Brooklyn, involving a traffic-bound aggressor. DeMonaco has said his wife, in a very casual manner, wished that she was allowed one legal murder per year so that she could use it on that a-hole. She didn’t mean it, of course, merely expressing her frustration with the moment, but DeMonaco extrapolated that moment into his screenplay for “The Purge.” 

During the Trump administration, however, politically motivated violence experienced a steep uptick in America. It didn’t help that the president kept openly implying that he wanted more violence and that he approved of right-wing attacks on left-leaning “enemies.” All of a sudden, the idea that mad politicians might allow something like the Purge to happen in real life felt disturbingly plausible to DeMonaco. He admitted:

“Everyone always asks me why didn’t I direct [‘The First Purge’] or the TV show. I’ve grown increasingly disturbed by this idea; there was an abstraction to the idea, and now that the abstraction is gone. Many people are saying that the Purge can become real in America. To hear that makes me very sad for our country, that we’re even in a place that that can be said aloud.” 

DeMonaco made that statement in 2018, before the events of January 6. It was also before he wrote “The Forever Purge” in 2021, a film that saw the Purge unlawfully extended — by a few flag-waving violence enthusiasts — past its 12-hour time frame continued indefinitely.