Movie Review: Upgrade

Upgrade

Director: Leigh Whannell

Starring: Logan Marshall-Green, Melanie Vallejo, Harrison Gilbertson, Betty Gabriel, Benedict Hardie, Simon Maiden

Rating: R

Runtime: 95 minutes

2018 is coming to its halfway point in June, and already we’ve seen multiple superhero blockbusters and numerous sequels/prequels to beloved franchises. These movies were all big budget, heavily advertised, and filled with high-profile actors. So, when Blumhouse Productions, typically known for their low-budget horror films like Get Out and Paranormal Activity, released a B-movie flick directed by one of the co-writers of the Saw series right as the summer movies begin, I for one was a bit skeptical but also intrigued.

Starring Logan Marshall-Green (known for his roles in Prometheus and Spider-Man: Homecoming) as Grey Trace, Upgrade initially presents itself as a sci-fi action film with themes of loss and revenge present almost from the onset. Set in a not-so-distant future, Trace is an old school auto mechanic in a world of self-driving cars and police drones that scan chips in people’s teeth to get their identification. But when an attack leaves Trace’s wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) dead and Trace a quadriplegic, his entire life is flipped upside-down. Things continue to escalate from there when eccentric tech mogul Eron (Harrison Gilbertson) offers Trace a chance to walk again with his innovative technology called STEM which, in Eron’s own words, “has the potential to change everything.” From there, we follow Trace and STEM (voiced by Simon Maiden) as they go on a quest to hunt down Asha’s killers and find answers.

The premise might seem a little wacky and even cliché to a degree, but to Upgrade’s credit it tries to do its best to deliver something innovative and new in a film landscape that feels repetitive more often than not. The fight scenes are choreographed beautifully, and the director uses incredible camerawork to follow the action in a way I’ve not seen often before, if ever. The movie does an amazing balancing act of showing just enough to convey the tension of each moment, with brutal scenes of violence that don’t linger too long on screen but are there just long enough for audiences to feel the drama of each scene. While you can tell that a movie like Upgrade doesn’t have nearly the budget of films like Deadpool 2, it still manages to make each action scene exciting and fun despite its financial limitations.

Logan Marshall-Green isn’t an actor I’d ever really thought much of, and truth be told when this movie was announced I thought of him as nothing but a Tom Hardy-lookalike. But he absolutely shows just how talented he is in this movie as he juggled lighthearted jokes with intense drama and crazy combat scenes that look both dynamic and at times humerous due to the nature of the narrative. Trace goes from a simple auto mechanic to a quadriplegic to a superhuman weapon, and Marshall-Green somehow manages to make each change believable with his acting skills. Much of the film is Trace and STEM’s interactions, and both Marshall-Green and Maiden handle their roles incredibly well to create our two heroes that you want to root for the entire film. Most of the rest of the cast is good, admittedly; however, their characters aren’t present too much throughout the movie and hardly get any fleshing out so its hard to comment on the acting too much outside of the two leads.

This movie is not without its flaws, however. The world created in this story revolves around the injection of technology into our society, and while at times it really feels like a world that I can see existing in the next few decades other times characters introduce technological abilities that just made me roll my eyes. Also, while I said most of the cast is good there are a few characters that are just frankly annoying, poorly written and/or forgettable. I will say though there was one character who initially I thought was poorly written but as more is revealed in the story I came to appreciate by the end.

The movie, as I said, initially presents itself as a sci-fi action flick, but as the film goes on it starts to slide into thriller territory and the twist ending will be one that I don’t think anyone will see coming. For me, the ending was very well done and made the movie even stronger than I initially felt, but for some I think it might leave them feeling upset. But perhaps that’s what the film wants.

Upgrade is a movie that I think will slide under the radar for many people because of its minimal marketing and the hype around some of the bigger movies it’s surrounded by, and that’s a shame because it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in a theater this year. Hopefully this review or other positive ones like it will reach audiences before the movie leaves theaters because I think it’s one that any fans of action or sci-fi will really enjoy.