User Reviews

This has seriously become my favorite AI movie to date. I can't believe it was low budget because it's impossible to tell apart from the unknown actors who all do an excellent job. I will do my best to replace its lack of marketing with recommeding it to everyone. I was expecting something entertaining and instead got an amazing plot with a mind-blowing ending. If you enjoy this genre, you can't let this one pass you by. What everyone says is true, it's like a long, perfectly executed Black Mirror episode. I rated it 10 stars for the simple reason that I could not fine anything wrong with it or anything I didn't like. From beginning to end, this movie is amazing. I cannot recommend it enough.

I admit to enjoying UPGRADE, a simple science fiction-oriented twist on the usual revenge storyline. I'll say straight away that the plot is nothing special and has been done plenty of times before; it's the use of familiar but new technology that makes this interesting. The identity of the villains and the supporting characters are quite perfunctory, but the direction is inventive and the film particularly shines in the action scenes, so much so that you wish there were more of them. The main actor commits to his part quite neatly and there are enough decent set-pieces to make this an enjoyable watch, more so than plenty of bigger-budgeted fare.

"Upgrade" (R, 1:35) is an action horror sci-fi comedy written and directed by Leigh Whannell, writer of the "Insidious" movies, the early "Saw" films, plus "Dead Silence", and director of "Insidious: Chapter 3". This movie was shot in Australia and Whannell and most of his cast are Australian. However, with the accents and the sets, you wouldn't know the movie wasn't American - and with the (lack of) quality in the last two "Insidious" movies, you wouldn't guess that Whannell was behind this gem of a film.

Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green, looking a lot like Tom Hardy) is an "old school" auto mechanic in a near future where intelligent, driverless cars are increasingly commonplace. He's married to Asha (Melanie Vallejo), an employee at a high-tech company. They live in a house that's suitably high-tech as well, operating with voice commands and equipped with a powerful computer embedded in a table top. They're very happy... until one night when they're on their way back from meeting one of Grey's clients, a reclusive computer genius named Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson). Their car crashes and they get mugged. Asha is killed and Grey is paralyzed from the neck down, with only his mother to care for him.

Eron visits Grey and offers him the opportunity to regain control of his body, with the help of a neck implant called Stem. The surgery succeeds spectacularly, Grey signs a non-disclosure agreement and heads home, promising that, at least for now, it appears to the world that he's still a quadriplegic. Grey quickly learns that Stem can talk to him (as voiced by Simon Maiden). Given the lack of progress by a police investigator named Cortez (Betty Gabriel), Grey takes advantage of Stem's Alexa-on-steroids capabilities to find the men who killed his wife. Normally not a violent man, Grey finds himself overmatched by these men, who themselves are technologically enhanced, until he learns how Stem can also help him fight. But, alas, avenging his wife's death isn't as satisfying as Grey might've expected.

"Upgrade" is a very appropriate title, given some of the writer-director's mediocre movies - and as a comparison to other films in the AI subgenre. This one is a combination of "Deadpool", "Ex Machina", "Transcendence" and the "Bourne" movies, but still feels fresh and creative, visually and narratively. The occasional comedy comes from the combination of Grey adjusting to having Stem's cells in his brain and some gallows humor as he pursues his wife's killers. The film also features one of the best recent casts you never heard of. The high-quality cinematography, editing, acting, pacing, directing and screenplay (with some late-game twists) makes this one of the most balanced and entertaining movies of 2018. "A"

'Upgrade' is a hybrid action/comedy/horror flick written and directed by Leigh Whannell, who previously brought us the highly successful 'Saw' and 'Insidious' franchises.

It stars Logan Marshall-Green, who shall forever be known as Tom Hardy's doppelganger (seriously--compare photos), opposite Betty Gabriel, a rising star famous for her turn in the breakout hit 'Get Out.'

While the acting and overall concept are both quite remarkable, there's an unmistakable clunkiness to the film, alternating between the dialogue, blocking, and editing.

However, the cinematography is superb, especially on such a low budget, and the action sequences when the bio-mechanical aspect of the film are fully utilized simply aren't to be missed.

As stories go, Upgrade isn't anything particularly spectacular. There's some really good ideas of course, but the idea of cyborgs and AI taking over humanity are as old as technology itself. It also surprisingly draws parallels to a superhero movie released in the same year; Venom, where a normal Tom Hardy-looking guy finds himself possessed by an entity that helps him get what he wants by controlling his body. Where Upgrade really shines is in its execution. The build-up leading to multiple multi-layered twists upon each other lend the film an unpredictable narrative complexity, where multiple rewatches are guaranteed to illuminate more subtle complexities, callbacks, and foreshadowing.

Something that really makes Upgrade stand out is Logan Marshall-Green, who offers a truly impressive physical performance that is both demanding and complicated to achieve. The controlling of his body by an AI leads to some stylish fight choreography, and Marshall-Green doesn't stutter in adding robotic, calculated movements to those scenes, while simultaneously acting in juxtaposition with his head and facial expressions. He's confused and bewildered while he slices a guy up with a kitchen knife, he brags and gloats while his body effortlessly dispatches of goons, he pleads with bad guys not to continue fighting while his robotic-moving arms quickly and decisively disarm and dispatch of them. He holds such an impressive disconnect between his head and his body that I couldn't even imagine how hard it must have been to develop such physical coordination while acting and making it look effortless at the same time. Marshall-Green has never particularly impressed me before, but he has now.

Even further though are clever uses of cameras adding another dimension to the film's visual identity. The high points are, again, the fight scenes, where the camera is just as involved in the choreography as the actors and stuntmen are. To add an even greater emphasis on the disconnect between Grey's mind and his body, the camera often keeps him fixed in frame while the settings around him movie. He's just enjoying the ride while his body does the moving, and we're put in that mindset. The way they did it is mount the camera in a rotating frame, hide a phone on Marshall-Green's body, and get them to match orientation. When Marshall-Green moves, the camera moves with him. This becomes especially impressive when Grey ducks and dives, or does full-on back-flips, and the camera mirrors his movements perfectly.

Beyond that, the cinematography goes a long way to make this low-budget movie look much more expensive. Lighting is dim and harsh, camera angles are conservative yet stylish, and the CGI is used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary, which has a knock-on effect of grounding an otherwise futuristic world without getting too lofty. The score by Jed Palmer is also fantastic. I was maybe a little disappointed that Whannell didn't go for a Saw-esque climatic track for the third-act revelations, but nonetheless the score is evocative of sci-fi movies of the 70s and 80s, with borderline synthwave tracks interspersed amongst more ambient sounds.

Upgrade is a solid sci-fi flick that manages to be refreshing and unique despite its otherwise overdone story elements. It ended up being a better Venom movie than Venom. All it took was an imaginative filmmaker like Leigh Whannell. I honestly can't wait to see what he manages to do next. I give Upgrade a solid 8/10.