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Social and political commentary in horror filmmaking is as old as horror filmmaking itself. Whether it's the Cold War, Civil Rights, Watergate, Vietnam, Reaganism, the Iraq War or Terrorism, America has used the horror genre to look inward at itself.

And the last decade in horror filmmaking is no exception.

Blessed be our new founding fathers and America, a nation reborn.

In 2013, James Domenico wrote and directed a low-budget home invasion film called The Purge, set in a dystopian near future where, for one night per year, murder and other crimes were legal.

This is your emergency broadcast system announcing the commencement of the annual purge sanctioned by the US government.

This cult, pulpy film contained plenty of silly B-movie thrills, but it also attempted to provide a biting social satire about class and race in America.

We are some fine, young, very educated guys and gals ready to violate, annihilate and cleanse ourselves.

A decade later, after several politically tumultuous years in America, writer director Beth Dioraho made a single take home invasion movie called Soft and Quiet.

Emily's life matters, so does mine. All lives matter.

The film also looked at racism and economic tension in America, but in a far more brutal and unflinching way.

While these two films couldn't film more different in their tone and execution, both movies convey a sense of fear, terror and pure rage about the state of modern America.

Join me as we continue exploring the evolution of home invasion, and we discuss James Domenico's The Purge and Beth Dioraho's Soft and Quiet.

Welcome back to the evolution of horror. My name is Mike Munter, and as ever I am your host. In this podcast, we explore and dissect the history and the evolution of the horror genre, one sub-jummer at a time.

We are currently in the middle of our ninth season exploring the evolution of home invasion horror, and this is part 26.

In this episode, as that intro suggested, we are going to be looking at The Purge from 2013 and Soft and Quiet from 2022. Both of these discussions will be spoilerific, but I will issue a brief trigger warning about Soft and Quiet before I recommend everyone check it out.

Soft and Quiet is probably one of the most extreme movies that we are covering on this home invasion season. It is a very upsetting, disturbing movie that contains extreme, racial, hateful language and assault, violence, torture and even some sexual violence as well.

So, I just wanted to make everyone very aware of that before we get into this week's discussion. So, joining me to discuss these two very different movies, I've got two very good long time friends of mine and friends of the pod.

They were lost here in our vampire series discussing Blade 2 and Cronos with me. I'm very excited to have them back. Matt and James from Journey Through Sci-Fi, hello!

How are things? James, how's Journey Through Sci-Fi? You guys have had a little summer break, right?

Yes, we've had a little hiatus, and that's still carrying on for the time being, but we are coming back into the main series shortly. I think next month we're going to start kicking things off again with our space opera series, which we are halfway through at the moment.

Matt, how are you finding space operas so far? I'm absolutely loving it, Mike. They are so much fun. They're so lighthearted. After this recording, I can't wait to go back and watch some nice, fun, refreshing lighthearted films for our podcast.

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