Respond to these rapid questions in our Upgrade quiz and we will tell you which Upgrade character you are. Play it now.
“Upgrade,” an irresistibly gory science-fiction melodrama, is a prime example of B-movie schlock executed flawlessly. Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is a pseudo-everyman mechanic whose body and wife are destroyed by upwardly mobile cyborgs with a God complex in the film, which follows his story (no, really). If you read the plot synopsis, you might conclude that writer/director Leigh Whannell has a lot to say about man’s relationship with technological advancement. This is incorrect because Whannell (writer/co-creator of “Insidious” and “Saw”) does not have the patience to develop any of his film’s larger ideas about how modern technology uses its creators more than we use it, which are presented in the film’s opening credits.
In addition to sickening violence and a Dr. Frankenstein-like computer scientist, Whannell provides a bar that’s decorated with as many bones (human and animal) as Leatherface’s den in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,” and a mystery sub-plot whose clues are all instantly ferreted out by “Stem” (Simon Maiden), a devil-on-your-shoulder version of KITT from “Knight Rogue.” Taken lightly, Whannell’s half-baked ideas and unabashed bloodlust make for a good time in “Upgrade,” so long as you don’t take them too seriously.
“Upgrade” begins by slapping a scifi gloss on top of a revenge story that is otherwise a paint-by-numbers affair. Cyborgs ambush Grey and his wife Asha (Melanie Vellajo) as they drive to their ostensibly fully computerized home, which is where they are ambushed by the cyborgs mentioned above. After an unexpected stopover in the poverty-stricken suburb where Grey grew up, Grey and Asha’s car is hijacked and destroyed (they don’t notice anything is wrong because they’re too busy making out in the backseat). Grey and Asha’s house, on the other hand, is just as plush and stylistically confusing as the pseudo-basic man cave that their car is escorting them away from: the subterranean lair of pouty super-scientist Eron (Harrison Gilbertson), whose futuristic man-foundation cave’s is built out of concrete, granite, wood, and glass, but is also filled with the same softly-hissing automated doors, voice-command-activated Even though the wealthy in “Upgrade” live differently from the rest of society, Grey is tentatively identified as an outsider because he works with his hands and sports a manly, face-assimilating beard that reduces his facial expressions to a gaping mouth and bulging Muppet-sized eyes.
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Grey’s superficial man-of-the-people persona endears him to Eron, a creepy loner genius whose vibe is essentially “the soul of Colin Clive in ‘Frankenstein,’ but in the body of a bad James Dean lookalike.” Eron is a creepy loner genius whose vibe is essentially “the soul of Colin Clive in ‘Frankenstein,’ but in the body of a bad James Dean lookalike.” In response, Eron offers to assist Grey after evil cyborgs kill Asha (this does not constitute a spoiler; it occurs early on!) and render Grey a quadriplegic: Eron will implant a revolutionary computer chip named Stem into Grey’s body, thereby assisting the crippled mechanic in regaining control over his body’s basic motor functions. Eron, unfortunately for Grey, does not immediately describe some of Stem’s most important characteristics, such as his sentience — Stem talks to Grey with an impassioned robotic voice, similar to HAL 9000’s low-budget understudy, HAL 350 — and his ability to commandeer and even boost Grey’s control over his body, if Grey grants Stem permission to do so. Stem naturally employs his superhuman abilities to assist Grey in his search for the perpetrators of his wife’s murder.
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When comparing Grey with RoboCop (another amoral killing machine fighting for his mortal soul), it’s tempting to draw comparisons, but Grey’s personality isn’t completely submerged within his body in the way that Peter Weller’s hapless ghost in the machine was in Paul Verhoeven’s satirical 1987 bloodbath. Grey actively encourages Stem to do whatever he needs to do in order to first protect their shared body, and then to further his own vengeance-fueled investigation into what happened to their bodies. Any pretensions to humanistic cyber-commentary that Whannell and his film may have had are shattered by a scene in which Grey orders Stem to use his body to disarm a group of thugs who have dragged him into a bathroom littered with bullet casings and urine after dragging him there. On the set of Grey’s new show, Stem is given permission to mercilessly cut up a thug’s face off camera. Grey also tells Stem to stop twice, but he doesn’t object too strongly once Stem’s victim provides Grey with the answers he seeks, which isn’t very often. In the event that you take this scene seriously, you might conclude that Whannell believes that technology has finally demonstrated what the military could not: torture is beneficial because it is effective! In addition, the fact that Grey never appears to pause to consider his penchant for merciless robo-enhanced murder will only serve to confirm your suspicions.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Upgrade quiz.
“Upgrade” is not that kind of picture, and it does not need to be that kind of picture either. As entertaining as it is because its chase scenes involve sadistic, artificially intelligent computers, nanotech bacteria, and Cronenberg-style handguns (i.e., there are actual guns in some people’s hands), Whannell’s fusion of a man-versus-technology narrative with a revenge-fueled whodunit is as entertaining as it is. Throughout the film, Marshall-Green flies across the screen, performing somersaults, karate parries, and even Michael Jackson’s 45-degree-angle lean, all while cleaving the bad guys’ jaws in half and/or shooting their brains out with a machine gun. While all of this is going on, murder-mystery clues are being thrown around with reckless abandon, and supporting characters, such as Grey’s mother (Linda Cropper) and the suspicious detective (Betty Gabriel) assigned to his wife’s case, come and go with little rhyme or reason. The key to enjoying “Upgrade” is to take pleasure in its ridiculous characters, plot twists, and cheesiness. “Upgrade” may or may not be spelled with a capital G. Although it is a good film, it can also be extremely enjoyable.
For more personality quizzes check this: All The Money In The World Quiz.
