New on DVD

Batten down the hatches for ‘ The Forever Purge’

The fifth film about America’s preeminent fictional dystopian holiday tops the DVD releases for the week of Sept. 28.

“The Forever Purge”: The lawlessness doesn’t end at sunup this time around, as racist hate groups seek to use the “blood holiday” to bring about class warfare and ethnic cleansing.

For this most recent outing, “the filmmakers take on the timely topic of immigration at the southern border,” writes Tribune News Service critic Katie Walsh in her review. “Ana de la Reguera and Tenoch Huerta star as Adela and Juan, a Mexican couple who flee across the border to Texas. Juan finds work for a wealthy white ranching family, the Tuckers, though tensions have erupted with son Dylan (Josh Lucas), who feels emasculated by Juan’s remarkable horse-handling skills.”

The families hunker down for the annual bloodletting, only to find the attacks still going in the morning, part of a loosely coordinated effort by hate groups to bring about “Purge Purification.”

“With America on fire and the heavily armed populace turning on each other, millions of U.S. citizens including the Tuckers, with Adela and Juan in tow, make a break for the Mexican border,” Walsh writes. “Viewed with the lens of real life political and humanitarian issues at the Mexican border, the irony is palpable.”

Tenoch Huerta as Juan in “The Forever Purge.” UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Also new on DVD Sept. 28

“Blithe Spirit”: Based on the 1941 comedy by playwright Noel Coward, Dan Stevens stars as an author suffering from writer’s block ever since the death of his first wife five years prior. In desperation he turns to a medium, played by Judi Dench, asking her to conduct a séance at his home. But there’s an unexpected hitch when the spirit of his deceased former spouse is summoned.

“Twist”: A modern crime thriller update of “Oliver Twist” about hustlers planning an art heist in present-day London, featuring Michael Caine and Lena Headey.

“First Date”: A teen planning his first date with the girl next door realizes he needs a vehicle and buys an old ‘65 Chrysler after seeing an online ad. The date devolves into a surreal misadventure however, as the young couple are targeted by cops, criminals and even a crazy cat lady.

Out on Digital HD Sept. 28

“Free Guy”: Ryan Reynolds stars as a bank teller who realizes he is in fact a nonplayable character, or NPC, in the background of an open-world video game and decides to rewrite his story.

Heir

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back that Amazon used to fax us the orders,” Arvanigian remembered. The store may be closed, but Halloween is not. Arvanigian has taken his vast experience in the industry and launched a project of his own, Deja Boo, under the tagline “Shopping made scary simple.”

There’s no kids entrance on the website, so proceed at your own risk. Split faces, killer clowns, and sickly zombies prevail, just like old times. “It would be impossible to recapture the magic of Halloween Outlet’s special moment in time, but we are going to put Worcester back on the map when it comes to Halloween,” he promised. Prepare yourselves.

Check out Deja Boo’s selection and support a Worcester artisan this Halloween at https://dejaboo.store.

Harding

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gently, but the album’s coherence is remarkable. When we move on to songs such as “Come So Far” and “Hold You At Night,” it might be easy to miss that Harding has tightened his lens, focusing in more on a romantic relationship, one in disarray: “Turn around face me now/Don’t run out the door/No matter how bad things are now/I won’t ask you for more.” This changes the album’s picture: Something is genuinely wrong, and while earlier the persona could be anyone — a friend, a sibling, a lover — now it’s clear how personal this absence is, and how disturbing the demons. The question still echoes: “Will you get better someday?” Now, though, the listener is forced to wonder if the persona is part of that solution, culpable in the problem, or neither. Harding fills that liminal space with nostalgia, particularly, in “Window,” he recalls a beautiful, tender moment underneath a sky full of stars, but inevitably, the persona always returns to bargaining, begging the subject to return in “Life’s Too Short.” The persona spends most of the album pleading to what seems to be empty air.

“Blanket” is a tender spot of comfort for the persona, but the absence lingers. It’s baked into the album’s structure, always tugging at the listener’s ear, even when the subject is absent from the song. Still, it’s not until “Say I Again” that the persona expresses any sense of culpability: “I will never bother you again,” sings Harding, in the chorus, “because I hurt you bad.” We don’t learn what he did to warrant that. Just that, “I remember the night you told me/You told me how it’s going to be/We were at Ralph’s to hear a band/You will only hangout with your other friends.” Many of us have seen that breakup happen at Ralph’s Rock Diner, actually. It’s one of those things that, from the outside, is always painfully apparent what’s happening.

Harding’s guitar work is understated. He plays with a light hand, and it pays off repeatedly, particularly on “Little Child,” where he returns to the theme of someone running away. It’s a testament to the album that Harding’s able to maintain an emotional thread throughout, and a lot of that job rests with his guitar. Still, as the album moves into its closing triptych, he picks up the tempo, even as he begins to tie together the song’s emotional strands. “No Place” seems to have a sense of acceptance, even as the persona acknowledges a debt to the subject which he could never repay. “Don’t Go With Him” seems, on the face of it, as a song about the subject leaving with someone else, but lines such as, “Please don’t go with him/You’ve got a feeling that’s under your skin” evoke something entirely different than losing someone to a person. Finally, things wrap up with “Grass,” with the persona again indulging in nostalgia, but now seemingly more aware that he’s doing it. “Our happiness on that day,” sings Harding, “Will never be taken away.” The absence which has haunted the album is never really resolved, because it can’t be. Whatever the couple had has vanished entirely. “Will you get better some day?” turns out to be the wrong question, she will or she won’t. We can’t see that from this vantage. But will she return? The answer, in the end, seems to be “no.”