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HA! For 100 days in 1994, Rwandans were encouraged to kill with machetes. 800,000 people were murdered by men, women and children hacking up neighbors and taking their land, cattle and homes for themselves.

According to Wikipedia, the Rwanda genocide rate of slaughter was 5 times higher than the Nazi death camps.

The Rwandan genocidewas a genocidal mass slaughter of the ethnic group, the Tutsi, by members of the Hutu majority. An estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans were killed during the 100-day period constituting as many as 70% of the Tutsi population. Additionally, 30% of the Pygmy Batwa were killed.

The Hutu civilians were told to arm themselves with machetes, clubs, blunt objects, and other weapons to kill their Tutsi neighbors and to steal their property. Men killed their Tutsi wives. Women took their children to help with the slaughter.

Supposedly, the German people did not know that the Jews leaving on trains were headed to death camps. The Nazis had the SS to do the dirty work. In Rwanda, farmers and anyone with a machete could kill without any interference from anyone. I’ve been to Rwanda. It will never be a tourist destination.

The exceptional brutality and sexual torture of Hutu women indicates that rape was encouraged and widespread. The UN Special RapporteurRene Degni-Segui stated, “Rape was the rule and its absence was the exception.” He also noted, “Rape was systematic and was used as a weapon.”

After the genocide, over one million people were potentially culpable for a role in the genocide, nearly one-fifth of the population remaining after the summer of 1994.

So was the 2013 horror film, THE PURGE, really that shocking? Was it an idea whose time would never come? The new government gave its citizens a mere 12 hours to commit any crime without punishment whatsoever. The Hutus had 100 days! The only weapons allowed were class 4 and below. Every household in Rwanda had his-and-her machetes! Government officials were granted immunity from The Purge. No one strolled Rwanda wearing an “immunity cloak.”

THE PURGE’S budget was so tiny that its $89 million gross made it a certified blockbuster. Then came the sequel, THE PURGE: ANARCHY (2014) and the franchise ended its trilogy with THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR (2016).

But what started the whole thing? Whose idea was that?

Now comes THE FIRST PURGE and the filmmakers have tossed the template out. We now know more of the details. The U.S. Constitution has been thrown out and a new government, New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA), is calling the shots.

Director Gerard McMurray has replaced PURGE’S creator James DeMonaco, but DeMonaco is credited with writing the script. DeMonaco’s origin story is kind of slim. The movie begins with the first Purge as a kind of experimental run-through. (The rumor was that the Hutus had a dress rehearsal for their genocide in 1992.)

This was no psychologist with a grudge – this was merely a social experiment suggested by Dr. Updale (Marisa Tomei). She has friends in the NFFA. “Let’em run loose for 12 hours.” Update could have referenced archaic tribes who used hunting other tribes as a means of building a social structure and sense of community.

Experiments need controls. What better location than Staten Island? Its surrounded by water! Close a few exit points and everyone in, stays in. The residents of Staten Island are given adequate time to leave. Walmart and Neiman Marcus will have to fend for themselves. Who needs a reason to loot?

Staten Island, even though it is home to drug dealers and weapon-peddlers, is still a peace and love thy neighbor community. Not everybody is signing up to wear special contacts that will record everything savage slaying. There are bonuses if you kill a lot of people.

Now there may very well be some mansions by the water, but the Staten Island we see here is populated by blacks and Latinos. You are either living on welfare or selling drugs. Dmitri (Y’lan Noel) leads a large crew of drug dealers. Killing his customers makes no sense to him. He’s gonna chill at his crib. He’s got a Tony Montana crew to uard him. Hell, he’s been killing people all his life – but for a good reason.

Dmitri’s real love Nya (Lex Scott Davis) has seen the light and has dropped his sorry ass. He might have a warehouse full of money, but does he have medical insurance? Does he own a condo is Florida? She has become a community-leader, a church-goer and a substitute mother to her younger brother Isaiah (Joivan Wade). Isaiah promises Nya he is getting out of Staten Island but stays to kill. He’s got a crazy bully after him. Now is his time to step up and cap that freak, Skeletor (Rotimi Paul). Now Skeletor has that PCP-meth  side-advantage, he is immune to pain.

Is The Experiment just a way to release bent-up frustration? Without a foreign war, what is a country to do to keep its population down and maintain a society of warriors who escaped death in battle?

What if the hidden agenda was ethnic cleansing or outright genocide? Ethnic cleansing has not been defined and is not recognized as a crime under international law, according to the U.N.

The Experiment begins. Dr. Updale and a NFFA official (Patch Darragh) are at command center watching hundreds of live video feeds. Heck, it’s into hour 3 and no one is killing their neighbors or looting pharmacies. No, folks are having big block parties with food, music and dancing!

No one is getting with the program, so NFFA has a Plan B. Show them what they should be doing. Meanwhile, Isaiah finds Skeletor but takes a beating and loses his gun. He calls and cries to his sister who is safely in church. Nya runs out without a weapon to find her brother. Taking a cue from Nostromo’s Private Frost, she’s packing “harsh language.”

The NFFA decides to send in mercenaries to show the candy-assed Staten Islanders how to Purge the right way. Dressed up in KKK costumes and white redneck overalls and cheap Nazi Halloween gear, the whites aim to open up the racism wound of the black and Latino disenfranchised.

Who will take a stand and fight for community and peace? It’s not Isaiah. Its drug lord Dmitri! Staten Island is his turf and he’s going to protect it from the evil white man.

DeMonaco needs to infuse his franchise with an outsider’s fresh approach. I did not care for any of the characters and since when is a ghetto drug pusher a superhero with a moral code?

Member of Las Vegas Film Critics Society: www.lvfcs.org/.Victoria Alexander lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and answers every email at victoria.alexander.lv@gmail.com.