Upgrade

Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus, The Invitation, Snowden) stars in this qazi-cyberpunk action mystery from Blumhouse productions. Set in an urban near future, Marshall-Green plays a vinyl-loving, classic-car tinkering technophobe named Grey Trace, married to a successful high-tech developer named Asha (Melanie Vallejo). One night, their self-driving car malfunctions and lands them in a bad neighbourhood, where a band of toughs attacks them. Asha is murdered, and Grey is left a quadriplegic. But it just so happens that the last client he was fixing up an old muscle car for was a Zuckerburgian tech billionaire named Erin King (Harrison Gilbertson). Erin's latest invention could be the answer to Grey's problems. It's an insect-like computer chip called STEM that can re-connect the severed neurons between Grey's brain and body and help him track down those who murdered his wife.

A neo-Luddite who must surrender control of his body to an untested high-tech gizmo in order to find his wife's killers is a solid idea for a movie. But this tedious picture is far more interested in bland world-building and generic fight scenes than in developing its premise or characters. Director/screenwriter Leigh Whannell (writer of several other Blumhouse quickies directed by James Wan, like the Saw and Insidious series) never lands on a consistent tone. Upgrade is all dark, dreary, and pretentious until it shifts into something more comedic as we see STEM operating Grey's body in dangerous situations that grow less and less amusing or exciting the more STEM becomes all-powerful. The film plays like The Crow meets Minority Report meets Brain Damage meets All of Me meets the interminable fight sequences of every superhero movie you've seen for the last twenty-five years.

Ya see, STEM not only has the ability to control Grey's body, prevent him from feeling pain, and anticipate an opponent's moves with flawless accuracy; it also has control over anything electronic. I have no idea if that's anything electronic connected to the web, within a certain distance, or on a particular network because Whannell seems to have no interest in the kind of limitations and specificity that make stories like this work. Oh yeah, that little computer chip can also turn Grey's damaged body into that of an indestructible, Terminator-like being with superhuman fighting skills because, you know... AI.