Director Report Card: Leigh Whannell (2018)

2. Upgrade

Jason Blum has managed to turn his business model of modestly budgeted genre films, all but guaranteed to turn a profit within days, into a miniature empire. Blumhouse Productions has grown so successful that spin-off divisions of the studio now exist. The name brand has extended to television, gaming, and books. In 2014, Blumhouse would launch BH Tilt, a label dedicated to “generating projects for multi-platform release,” whatever that means. Tilt has mostly made the same sort of stuff regular Blumhouse puts out, with slightly more emphasis on action. Easily the most high-profile of Tilt's releases is 2018's “Upgrade,” an original script from Leigh Whannell. After showing he could make a successful movie with “Insidious: Chapter 3,” this would be the director proving himself apart from James Wan's creations, Whannell establishing his own distinct brand as a filmmaker. 

In the not too distant future, police drones fill the air, self-driving cars are standard practice, and cybernetic implants in human beings are becoming common. Grey is a mechanic with a devotion to the old ways, rebuilding classic muscle cars for a dwindling list of clients. His wife, Asha, works in tech though. His last client is genius inventor, Eron Keen, who has recently created a computer implant known as STEM. On the drive back, the couple's car mysteriously crashes and a group of men arrive, leaving Grey paralyzed and Asha dead. His life ruined, Grey attempts suicide... Only to be met in the hospital by Keen, who offers him use of STEM as long as it remains secret. The microchip enables him to walk again. It gives him much more than that, the computer system communicating with Grey and giving him extraordinary abilities. This gives Grey a chance to hunt down the men who killed his wife. The two uncover a conspiracy but STEM soon proves itself to be far more dangerous than Grey imagined. 

On paper, “Upgrade” doesn't seem to be more than a science fiction variation on a type of story all action movie fans are familiar with. Being the most macho of all genres, action movies often disregard female characters, to the point that they frequently exist for little reason than to motivate the hero's violent rampage. Women are disposable victims, made to be leered at or to die in order to justify every horrible thing the “good guy” does. “Death Wish” is the modern trope signifier and most of the films to follow in its footstep aren't as self-aware as that morally dubious classic. “Upgrade” doesn't cast an older man as its vengeance seeker, having him be in his prime and barely avoiding the Dadsploitation label. However, the script's doesn't exactly resist the exploitation tendencies of the action genre either, going so far as to include a random car chase in a roaring muscle car halfway through. 

At the same time, “Upgrade” is a lot smarter than its B-movie set-up suggests. Grey allows STEM to be implanted in his body in hopes that it will improve his life. This is for the same reason we accept all technology into our lives. To get places quickly, to find information more easily, to distract ourselves more expediently. STEM offers a miracle cure for a quadriplegic. However, throughout the film, Grey has to give permission to STEM for it to totally take over his body. When in a life-or-death situation, he willingly cedes control to the computer to do something difficult. This isn't that different than the way any of us blindly click accept on the user agreement for any new application or software. That's before STEM takes full control of his body, whenever it wants and without asking for permission first. In other words: “Upgrade” is a movie about how all of us, far too easily, allow tech to control our lives without realizing what exactly we are giving up.

That made “Upgrade” slightly ahead of its own time in 2018. It feels like it's only been in the last five years that people have started to realize how detrimental letting digital technology into every corner of our lives has been. The brain rot that has grown from non-stop exposures to screens and social media, a hundred algorithms designed to keep the dopamine flowing at all times, is impossible not to see now. By following this instinct, “Upgrade” looks like one of the few sci-fi projects predicting a more accurate future. Self-driving cars, bio-mechanical implants, and fully automated homes already exist, after all. The film simply exaggerating them a little bit. One can't help but notice that the high-tech cars in the film resemble the hideous Cybertrucks that are starting to haunt our freeways and stalling out in the snow.

In other ways, “Upgrade” already feels like a vision from a simpler time. COVID really did change everything, didn't it? An early scene has Eron arriving at the hospital to see Grey while wearing a simple face mask, something the patient responds to as if it's an unusual or comical sight. Only two years after “Upgrade” came out, that idea is already improbable. Law enforcement monitoring the cities with drones was already starting to come to pass in 2018 and remain a common sight, “Upgrade” clearly reacting to a new change with the kind of fear and paranoia that we're all used to now. Eron Keen – whose first name is rather close to another mogul – still operates from the inevitably disproven belief that big tech moguls are actually smart. As I write this, the west coast is on fire and the east coast is buried in snow and class lines are becoming far sharper, suggesting climate change and income disparity are a much more prominent causes for a dystopian future than out-of-control tech or urban decay. 

Getting some things about the future right and some things wrong are an unavoidable hazard of writing sci-fi. The flubs “Upgrade” does make are not too distracting, as the film ultimately looks back as much as it looks forward. The film fits right in with the new wave of cyberpunk stories we've seen in the last ten years. A scene where a non-binary hacker, in an abandoned building populated mostly by hardcore VR addicts, fits right in with this new wave. While obviously concerned with the cybernetic, “Upgrade” is also a movie about how technology is changing our bodies. The antagonists are implant-outfitted hit men, with biotech shotguns built right into their arms and recording devices in their eyes and ears. Like “RoboCop” – probably its most obvious predecessor – “Upgrade” doesn't back away from showing what happens when soft flesh meets cold steel. Bodies are torn asunder, heads explode, and blood splatters throughout, marking this as a sci-fi story as grisly as it is slick.

Since at least “The Matrix,” the cyberpunk style has also been associated with kinetic action sequences right out of Hong Kong kung-fu flicks. “Upgrade” follows this path too, in especially clever way.  When STEM takes control of Grey's body, he becomes a ruthlessly efficient fighter, practically and easily avoiding his enemies blows, turning the environment against them, and violently dispatching them. Cinematographer Stefan Duscio used a special cell phone camera rig in order to center actor Logan Marshall-Green during these fight scenes. This creates an impressive illusion, as if the audience is riding right along with Grey as his body performs the kind of balletic movements he previously thought impossible. The first time these smooth, thrilling action sequences kick in, while inside a crook's home, is still the highlight of “Upgrade.” 

The brutal beat-downs and kinetic shoot-outs often occur in dimly lit buildings or oddly colored alcoves. “Upgrade” is another modern action flick clearly influenced by “John Wick,” as the film utilizes a neon-soaked color palette. That blends well with a brooding electronic score from Jed Palmer. These kind of signifiers point right towards the faux-retro “synthwave” aesthetic, that cyberpunk is a primary influence on. As derivative as these elements may seem, “Upgrade” makes them all work. The film's theatrical violence, gritty settings, and a cynical story about how you shouldn't trust anyone makes filtering reds, masking purples, and electric greens seem more brooding than stylized. “Upgrade” is as much a sci-fi noir – also evident in the subplot about Betty Gabriel's police detective on Grey's trail – as an Asian influenced action flick and a cyberpunkian exercise. Proving once again that no tropes are bad when used in interesting ways. 

While Whannell's script is clever, the visuals are sharp, and the action is cool and bloody, two performances ultimately elevate “Update.” Logan Marshall-Green is introduced as a throwback everyman, the kind of guy that hangs out in his garage and loves his wife. He's an average meathead but not in a lumbering way, proving likeable from the first scene. He also has a sarcastic wit, that reacts in amusing ways to the increasingly bizarre environments he finds himself in. Marshall-Green doesn't only have the movie star charm though. He gives a stunningly physical performance, moving in a distinctly robotic fashion when STEM begins to operate his body. It is precise and smooth, almost to the point of being unnoticeable, showing the kind of discipline that highlights truly good acting.

The other key performance in the film is Simon Maiden, an Australian character actor who has few flashy or big credits to his name. He voices STEM. At first, Maiden's voice is affable but flat, in that way we've come to expect from our digital assistants and robots. We don't want Alexa or Siri to sound too human, as that would make us uncomfortable. Fittingly, STEM sounds friendly but without human inflection... At first anyway. While the machine's deadpan reaction to everything is a source of dark humor, STEM's toneless speech soon takes on a sinister quality. Without ever raising his voice, with only the slightest change in pitch, Maiden manages to signal the exact point the audience is suppose to go from liking Grey's helpful cyber implant sidekick to realizing it is very dangerous. 

This leads to an uncompromisingly bleak ending, that I frankly didn't expect on first viewing. “Upgrade” takes the point of view that seems all too probable, as dispiriting as it is: Mankind's reliance on technology has irrevocably screwed us. That cynicism is what makes the film truly distinctive. There's a trace of superhero morality and far-out world building here. The skinny and unassuming looking Benedict Hardie, save for a sleazy pencil mustache, plays the leader of the assassins. He's essentially a comic book supervillain, a petty bad guy whose body has been outfitted with robotic superpowers. He's better in a fight than Grey and STEM too, as you'd expect from the hero's archenemy. At the same time, he makes references to being part of “The Upgraded,” clearly considering himself superior to humans without robotic parts in them. Harrison Gilbertson's Eron Keen is ambiguously on the spectrum with stark blonde hair, similarly feeling like a cartoon version of a tech genius. However, “Upgrade” never suggest that it's hero is right or morally superiors to those he fights, Grey getting sucked into more violence as the story progresses. In other words, this is an action film and a sci-fi story with an actual moral perspective, darker and more cynical than a bigger budget version of this story would be. 

That Whannell was allowed to make “Upgrade” a gory, thoughtful, and ambiguous film is probably because it cost all of three million dollars. Once again, the Blumhouse motto of keeping the budget as low as possible worked out. The film didn't connect with a mass audience exactly, only grossing eleven million, but with such a modest price tag, that was enough. “Upgrade” did immediately get noticed by horror nerds and anime geeks, the audience it was probably designed for anyway, and quickly grabbed some cult appeal. Which may expand further if the proposed television follow-up emerges, though there's also a lot of ways that could go wrong. Truthfully, I'd be happy if “Upgrade” remained as it is: An explosively entertaining genre throwback that is smart and dumb in all the right ways, giving us bristling actions and some big thoughts about the direction of the world. [Grade: A-]