Upgrade review: Much more than just another pre-programmed revenge thriller

Dir Leigh Whannell, 100 mins, starring: Logan Marshall-Green, Rosco Campbell, Richard Cawthorne, Michael M. Foster, Betty Gabriel, Harrison Gilbertson

Upgrade is being marketed as a gory sci-fi thriller/body horror fable in the David Cronenberg mould. It can just as easily be seen as a buddy movie with a techno spin. The “friend” who helps out the hero, solving his problems and giving him bionic powers, is a computer chip planted inside him after a car crash has left him as a quadriplegic.

Writer-director Leigh Whannell brings wit and originality to what could easily have been very hackneyed genre fare. He is one of the creators of the Saw “torture porn” franchise and the Insidious films. Upgrade has some of the same sadistic elements which characterised such earlier work but tempers the shock effects with satirical humour.

For example, the credits are read by a Siri-like helper rather than shown on screen. The main villain, visionary inventor, Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson) bears more than a passing resemblance to inventor and Tesla guru, Elon Musk.

The world Whannell conjures up is bitterly divided along class and wealth lines. Thanks to robots and computers, a privileged few have lives of ease and luxury while those left behind in the technological revolution live in poverty and violence.

Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is a rugged, blue-collar type whose idea of perfect happiness is tinkering with the engines of souped-up old cars while listening to rock music. He lives, though, in a futuristic city in which technology dominates every aspect of life. His wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) works for one of the tech companies.

Grey invites her along when he goes off to deliver a car to Eron, who is one of his customers. Asha is delighted to meet the visionary scientist and astounded by his underground house, which is also his laboratory.

On their way home, Asha and Grey have a crash in a rough part of town after their driverless car mysteriously malfunctions. Clambering from the wreck, they are held up at gunpoint by ruthless hoodlums who appear to have guns implanted in their arms. This is when Grey receives the life-changing injuries that leave him wheelchair bound.

“I am STEM, the system operating your body,” the tiny chip that Eron implants in Grey cheerfully tells its new host. This little chip works in the service of his brain. He can hear its voice in his head. It gives him prodigious mental abilities as well as fighting skills that put the fiercest Ninjas to shame. Eron wants to use Grey as a test case for STEM. Grey’s main concern is finding out who assaulted him and his wife.

As in all buddy movies, the new partners struggle initially to get along. Grey is thrown by the literal-minded approach of the widget inside him. It has no sense of metaphor or irony. If he asks it to wait for “a second,” that is precisely the amount of time it will delay.

Grey is dependent on it. If it stops operating, he won’t be able to move. STEM also relies on Grey. Without him, it wouldn’t have a host. There is a power struggle both between them and between STEM and his creator, Eron.

The nightmare scenario here is that the chip, which is so much cleverer than the humans which operate it, will take over from them. Early on, such a prospect is kept in the background as Grey hunts down the criminals who attacked him and his wife.

In his “upgraded” version, he can out-think and out-fight almost anyone. Local police detective Cortez (Betty Gabriel) wearily follows in his wake, looking for clues, as he leaves a trail of destruction around the city.

Suspense is generated in unusual ways. For example, in one key scene, Grey is left helpless on the floor with the thugs about to track him down and kill him as he waits for STEM to reboot. Whannell borrows from Frankenstein-like fables about inventors who create monsters they can’t control.

At times, the mix of deadpan humour and extreme violence can be very tasteless. (STEM knows just how to help Grey torture his enemies so they will give up secret information.) Whannell sometimes appears unsure whether he is making a cheesy B-movie or a dystopian allegory about AI systems turning on their human creators and running amok.

Whatever the case, Upgrade has enough extra features and add-ons to seem like much more than just another pre-programmed revenge thriller.

‘Upgrade’ hits UK cinemas 31 August