Steven C. Miller's film 'The Aggression
Scale' opens with the character of Lloyd (Dana Ashbrook) just
blasting some poor lady in the chest with a shotgun followed
by him blowing the back of some poor shlubs head off in a car,
and then he Polaroid's these poor dead people. The scale
of Lloyd's aggression is like sky high right? I mean
this is one angry, aggressive dude. Well, not
really. Lloyd is actually kind of cool, laid back and
he's actually kind of a passive lackey who just dutifully
follows orders. Aggressive people tend not to be
passive. I think those two words are actually the
opposite of each other. So whose aggression scale are we
concerned about here? Lloyd and his crew of brutal,
albeit bumbling hitmen are about to find this out.
Say hello to Bill (Boyd Kestner), his silent thirteen year old
son Owen (Ryan Hartwig), Bill's new wife Maggie (Lisa Rotondi)
and Maggie's awesomely bitchy eternally scantily clad teenage
daughter Lauren (Fabianne Therese). This brand new
family is starting a new life together, much to Lauren's
dismay, and has just purchased an absolutely gorgeous home
conveniently located out in the middle of nowhere.
Eventually we know that Lloyd and his crew of miscreants are
going to introduce themselves to these good folks, but
why? They seem so nice with the exception of Lauren.
For the reasons for this we first need to make the
acquaintance of Mr. Bellavance (Ray Wise). This guy has
a pretty high aggression scale, believe me. He's a
mobster of some kind, he's out on bail, it looks like he's
about to go down for the remainder of his and he needs to flee
the country. Problem is that somebody stole his secret
stash of loot, which is where his flunky Lloyd and his crew
come in as they have been dispatched to retrieve this loot and
murder anybody remotely connected to stealing this loot.
And Mr. Bellavance wants proof of death.
Simple enough. Now I know Bill couldn't
have stolen that money because stealing money from bad people
is stupid. If one is dead set on stealing from people,
then you steal from hard working honest people like Bernie
Madoff did because hard working honest people tend not to hunt
you down, torture you and murder your family after you steal
from them.
One knock on the door later, let's just say that our new
family isn't doing too well anymore as Bill apparently did
that stupid thing that he should've known not to do. Our
hitmen still have a problem however. They don't have the
money and those two kids made it out of the house. No
problem, they're just kids, right? Plus one of them might know
where the money is. Just get 'em back, torture them,
kill 'em, move on. Oh well, so much for that.
While Lauren is certainly a head case, she's more
self-destructive. Owen on the other hand… I don't think
our hitmen weren't quite ready for what Owen brought to the
table. In fact Owen is so batshit insane, and methodical
about how he goes about his business, don't be surprised if
you find yourself mildly rooting for the murderous
hitmen. I mean these guys, bad as they might be, are
only doing their jobs and they aren't showing up at my house
unless I do something stupid like steal from the mob, whereas
Owen is treating this bad situation like a trip to the Splash
Park and he might show up on my front porch at anytime just
for fun. I'm just saying.
Director Steven C. Miller's first movie was a little zombie
flick called 'Automaton Transfusion' from some years back and
I was really hoping he'd get around to actually finishing that
movie before moving on to other projects, but it doesn't looks
like that's ever gonna happen. Yeah I didn't like that
movie all that much but I still would've liked to have known
how it all ends. That being said I had a much more
fulfilling experience with 'The Aggression Scale'. It's
a Home Invasion movie which we are all familiar with,
featuring a lot of the same types of players we see in these
movies from violent hitmen to helpless damsels but there are a
couple of elements which gives 'The Aggression Scale' a bit of
an edge.
Take the bumbling hitmen for starters because these guys were
kind of funny. Especially Derek Mears who looks about as
scary as any dude ever, until he opens his mouth and these
well-spoken words with a comedic slant come spilling out of
arguably the scariest looking dude ever. In all honesty
the hitmen in this movie were so grossly incompetent that this
probably should've been a deal breaker in this movie but it
worked.
But the main reason the movie works is the quiet, cute
insanity put forth by young Ryan Hartwig. We're used to
seeing kids rise up and turn the tables on grown folks, but
rarely are we afraid of these cute cherubs. Seriously,
Owen is dangerous. It could probably be argued that Owen
is the villain in this piece. We enjoyed seeing the kid
in action but it wasn't lost on us that the world as a whole
would probably be better off if the crazed killers got their
act together and did their freaking jobs.
A movie such as this does stretch the believability to the
breaking point, this one probably more so than most, and while
Fabianne Therese is an easy kid to look at, if at anytime the
director wanted to ask her to stop screaming and howling and
yelling and howling some more, I wouldn't have been upset with
him, but with Ray Wise chewing up scenery like a square of
Laffy Taffy, solid performances from pretty much everybody
involved, some of the most brutal violence I've seen in quite
some while and arguably the craziest kid ever put on high-def
video, The plusses in 'The Aggression Scale' far outweigh its
negatives.
