Review | Upgrade film review: Blumhouse sci-fi thriller is intellectually provocative and a moral tale of revenge and technology
- After his wife is murdered and he is crippled, a man is implanted with a microchip that talks to him and can take control of his body
- He tracks down his wife’s killers and the chip takes over and kills them in this up-to-date budget thriller
4/5 stars
Although its ruminations on the dangers of cybernetics, artificial intelligence, robotics and the Internet of Things are not original, Upgrade creates a balance between the failings and benefits of technology, and the trade-offs we must make between the two. The script by Whannell has enough mystery to hold the attention, and the final twists at the end are satisfying.
It begins when Grey (Logan Marshall-Green), a technophobic car mechanic, takes a trip with his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo), an executive with a big technology company, to deliver a car to Eron (Harrison Gilbertson), a reclusive genius who has built a microchip that can interface with the human brain.
On the way home, Asha’s automatic car is hacked, she is murdered, and Grey is crippled. Eron secretly implants the chip into Grey to enable him to walk again, and Stem, the AI operating system that connects his brain to the chip, starts talking to him.
Stem helps Grey track down his wife’s killers and takes over control of his body to dispatch them with invincible fighting moves. But where will the trail of vengeance end?