The Purge Election Year: 10 Things You Didn’t Know

Photo via Universal/Blumhouse

6. The movie was mostly shot in Providence, Rhode Island

During the production of The Purge: Election Year, the crew was spotted filming in Washington D.C. While they did indeed shoot some exterior shots of landmark locations, such as the Lincoln Memorial, part of the intention of shooting there was to make it seem like they were shooting most of the movie there. The truth is that they were hardly even there.

In fact, the film was shot almost entirely in Providence, Rhode Island, with the crew transforming the city into Washington. The shots actually taken in Washington were digitally edited in post-production to make them seem more chaotic— they didn’t start any fires or use any fake corpses on the set. With today’s political climate, setting up such displays in the nation’s capital probably wouldn’t be such a good idea.

DeMonaco explained that shooting in Washington D.C. is really hard for filmmakers because of all the security measures, which are understandable. It’s even more compounding when you are doing a movie like this, with police on hand for every moment of shooting to examine every prop gun and things of that nature. It’s just best not to film there unless you’re doing a documentary on Obama.

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