THE AGGRESSION SCALE (2012)

Streaming on Tubi from Epic Pictures!
Directed by Steven C. Miller.
Written by Ben Powell.
Check out the trailer here!!

Steven C. Miller is a relatively new voice in horror who is about to make big waves as soon as his SILENT NIGHT (the remake of SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT) is released this December. But those looking to find out what kind of horrors the director is capable of should look no further than THE AGGRESSION SCALE, a ballsy home invasion film that pulls no punches with no fucks given.

The plot is somewhat simple. A mobster name Bellavance (Ray Wise) goes to prison and Bill a lower-level employee (Boyd Kestner) takes his money and runs with it. Buying a new home, Bill, with a new wife Maggie (Lisa Rotondi) and her snotty daughter Lauren (Fabianne Therese), plans to start a new life, creating a nuclear family with his own troubled son Owen (Ryan Hartwig). Everything is hunky dory until a quartet of thugs show up to collect the cash from Bellavance. What the thugs didn’t realize was that the troubled teen is much more troubled than anyone had imagined.

Sure, the plot serves as a twisted mirror image of HOME ALONE as a kid makes booby traps to thwart the bad guys but never has a Rube Goldbergian mechanism been so devious or destructive as it is in this film. Hartwig gives a great performance as the silent but violent kid who is more like John Rambo than Macaulay Culkin as he whittles together booby traps that sear flesh, gouge hands, and shatter kneecaps of his pursuers. Turns out the kid is pretty handy with a shotgun too.

The cast of THE AGGRESSION SCALE is fantastic. Not only do we have Dana (TWIN PEAKS) Ashbrook, who is all snarls as the head baddie and sheds his boyish looks for a silver crewcut and beard, but we have a hockey maskless Derek (FRIDAY THE 13TH Remake) Mears offering a great performance as the muscle of the group. Rounding out the bad guys is the freaky kid from GUMMO, Jacob Reynolds, all grown up but still boyish in demeanor, which adds even more creepiness to his performance as thug three. Fabianne Therese is gorgeous but hard to like as the annoying sister, but given the despicable performances by the bad guys, you end up rooting for her by association to her badass stepbrother. And though his part is small, Ray Wise, as always, shines despicably as the mob boss.

THE AGGRESSION SCALE is a throwback film that lauds the gritty violence of the action films of the 70’s and early 80’s. Miller has shown that not only does he have a masterful handling of style and scare, but he can also do action with a confident hand. Lovers of hardcore action will want to put THE AGGRESSION SCALE on their must see list.