Upgrade Grade

Somewhere between "officially" queuing Upgrade as a movie I wanted to see and actually getting around to seeing it, I managed to forget absolutely everything about the movie. What exactly it was, where I'd heard of it, whether anyone had told me they liked it -- all of that wiped away.

For my readers' sake, here's what to expect. Upgrade is set in a sci-fi near-future. Grey Trace is paralyzed in a violent mugging, left powerless and grief-stricken at the loss of his wife. A wealthy and reclusive inventor comes to him with a proposition. For the price of his silence, Grey can be the test subject for a computer implant named STEM, a device that will act as intermediary between his brain and body and allow him to walk again. The procedure is a success, but with unanticipated consequences. STEM is sentient, and while subservient to Grey's control, its abilities present Grey with dark opportunities for revenge. Soon Grey is hunting his attackers, evading police investigators, and trying to stay one step ahead of the inventor who doesn't want his technology misused.

Upgrade was a pleasant little surprise, an interesting hybrid of different elements. In some ways, it plays out like a superhero origin story (right down to the not-so-compelling "fridging" of a love interest as motivation for the hero). The gradual discovery of special powers may be familiar territory, but it's treated here with enough novelty and cleverness to entertain.

There are also some horror movie elements here. That's not surprising when you consider this movie was written and directed by Leigh Whannell, the writer behind the early Saw films and the Insidious franchise. It's even distributed by a subsidiary of Blumhouse Productions, a studio noted for horror films. But Upgrade isn't concocted to make you jump or cringe. There's just something inherently horrific in the notion that your thoughts and actions might not be entirely your own.

There's also obvious horror in the incredibly graphic violence of the film. But the visceral thrills aren't limited to the viscera. Fist fights abound through this film, and each is top notch. The choreography is brilliantly conceived, the execution intense and effective, and the photography an integral part of the style. Indeed, there's great camera work throughout the film, full of strange angles anchored to people instead of the environments they're in, use of both long takes and quick editing in different moments, and a devotion to the effective use of shadow and light.

There are great performances too. Logan Marshall-Green has a perfect physicality as Grey Trace, creating a movement language that's clearly robotic without seeming overworked. Betty Gabriel (an underappreciated highlight of Get Out -- so underappreciated I didn't mention her in my review) gets to engage in noir-esque hard-boiled cop cliches that feel refreshed by putting a woman of color in the role. Simon Maiden is fun and chilling as the voice of STEM.

Fun as the ride often is, though, it's also completely nonsensical. The tone of the ending is great, but the logic is non-existent. Somewhere between five seconds and five minutes after the end credits roll, you'll say to yourself, "but wait... if that.... then this!" And the whole story will completely unravel. Things simply wouldn't have happened the way they do, and while it's possible to overlook that in the moment in favor of the movie's better attributes, it increasingly impossible to do so after the fact.

If you're up for a violent, vengeful thriller with sci-fi overtones, Upgrade is for you. Its heart is in the right place, even if not all its plot threads are. I grade it a B.