Movie Review: Upgrade

Upgrade *** / *****

Directed by: Leigh Whannell.

Written by: Leigh Whannell.

Starring: Logan Marshall-Green (Grey Trace), Melanie Vallejo (Asha Trace), Steve Danielsen (Jeff Handley), Abby Craden (Kara), Harrison Gilbertson (Eron Keen), Benedict Hardie (Fisk), Richard Cawthorne (Serk), Christopher Kirby (Tolan), Richard Anastasios (Wen), Linda Cropper (Pamela), Betty Gabriel (Detective Cortez), Emily Havea (Nurse Henderson), Ming-Zhu Hii (Dr. Diana Gordon), Simon Maiden (Stem), Sachin Joab (Dr. Bhatia), Clayton Jacobson (Manny)

 

Perhaps there is a truly great science fiction movie lurking inside the premise of Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade – but if there is, Whannell doesn’t seem too interested in exploring it. Rather, he uses his rather ingenious premise as a jumping off point to make a gory, B-grade revenge film, and while no one could mistake it for high art, if taken in the spirit intended, than it’s still a lot of fun to watch the film, as it gets increasingly insane, and increasingly bloody. We probably shouldn’t expect Whannell – writer of the original Saw, and co-writer of the Insidious series, to get bogged down in big ideas – and perhaps we don’t want him to either. He knows precisely what he wants Upgrade to be – and if that isn’t overly ambitious, well, it also doesn’t suffer from delusions of grandeur either.

 

In the near future, machine control almost our entire lives (sounds like the present to me, but I digress). Technophobe Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) prefers to work with his hands though – on stuff like old cars, that don’t have all that techno-crap. One of his clients is Eron (Harrison Gilbertson), the head of the biggest tech company in the world though, so when Grey and his wife are attacked by a group of people with guns implanted into their bodies, leaving his wife dead, and Grey a quadriplegic, Eron reaches out to him. His newest technology – called Stem – can be implants in Grey – and allow him to walk again. Of course, he’ll have to keep it a secret – you cannot just implant this type of stuff in people without years of testing (apparently these people didn’t see Kirby Dick’s The Bleeding Edge). Once Stem is inside Grey, it does indeed give him the ability to move again – and lots of other things as well. Grey and Stem become an unstoppable killing machine – and you know who Grey is going after. But Stem also keeps learning, and becomes increasingly powerful to boot.

 

Upgrade is schlock. There is no way around it – the film is pure b-movie madness in which the first killing that Grey and Stem do nearly takes off someone’s head in a splatter of blood – and is downright tame compared to the rest of the film. Whannell could, undeniably, have made a film that explores man’s relationship with machines, the dangers of technology and playing God, etc. – but he isn’t interested in that. He wants to kill people in increasingly cool, increasingly bloody ways. Mission accomplished.

 

The movie works basically because everyone knows precisely what kind of movie they are in, and what is required of them. Marshall-Green is fine as the everyman (even if, every time I see him, I cannot help but think of him as the poor man’s Tom Hardy) – and the rest of the cast, from Gilbertson as techno-nerd who invention gets away from him, to Benedict Hardie as Fisk, leader of the tech gang who killed Grey’s wife, play their roles to the hilt as well. Whannell doesn’t dwell too long on how any of this is supposed to work – preferring instead to get to the killings, and not let up.

 

Up until now, Whannell’s career behind the camera (he’s an actor too), has mainly been tied to director James Wan – who directed Saw and Dead Silence and Insidious, all written by Whannell. This is his second film as director – after Insidious: Chapter III – and it’s good see him out of Wan’s shadow for once (there is, for sharp eyed viewers, a reference to Wan in the film). Wan has established himself as one of the premiere directors of horror working in America today – mainly with The Conjuring, its sequel and Insidious. He has now moved onto blockbuster – with the Furious Seven and the upcoming Aquaman, and we’re all the poorer for it. Whannell though doesn’t seem so quick to leave the bloody world of horror and B-movies behind him. While he isn’t the director Wan is – Upgrade is a significant improvement over his last film, and makes me curious as to what he’ll do next. This is small budget, genre filmmaking done right.