It’s always unnerving to walk out of a movie and be confronted by real-world news mirroring the events that just played out in the theater. But it’s rarely as specific or dystopian as scrolling past a breaking bulletin on a fatal self-driving car crash directly after watching such an occurrence on screen.
While Saw writer turned director Leigh Whannell has situated his new sci-fi thriller Upgrade in a future chock-a-block with fantastical new technologies, he’s evidently not too far from reality’s mark. Cars have already learned to pilot themselves in 2018, and Whannell just needed to extrapolate one step farther with sleek honeycomb-shaped plates covering the windows for maximum privacy. When one such vehicle malfunctions, it leaves our man Grey Trace (professional Tom Hardy lookalike Logan Marshall-Green) and his tech executive wife (Melanie Vallejo) defenseless from a roving band of crooks. He leaves the scene quadriplegic; she doesn’t make it home. The resultant desperation introduces Grey Trace – perhaps the most egregious character name since After Earth got away with Cypher Raige – to an invented body modification called Stem that takes automation to its logical extreme. And all the while, these extremes feel a little too logical for comfort.
Whannell makes no bones about his luddite leanings, seizing on the relatively simple theme of “technology, bad!” and applying it with finesse to AI, VR and assorted other two-letter combinations. He’s realized his future with an eye for immersive detail, even as his philosophies peg him in a more fogeyish mindset. While Whannell wrestles with warring desires to fret over the techno oblivion we’re hurtling towards or have a laugh about it, that conflict manifests in a disappointing tonal clash that robs the film of the low-rent fun it could be having. They don’t call it the “future tense” for nothing, but the guy could stand to loosen up a little.
Marshall-Green is attuned to this same inner incongruity, all business when he’s talking about his standard-issue dead wife and then later mugging with tongue firmly in cheek as if he understands what a silly premise he’s fallen into. Grey Trace prides himself on his analog tastes that run against the grain of his digital world, but the inability to use his limbs compels him to begrudgingly accept Stem into his spinal cord. He’s no mere Six Million Dollar Man – unlike the gangsters roving around with guns in their forearms, Grey Trace has no cybernetic augmentation, only a bodily autopilot that can make him a killing machine at a moment’s notice. The roach-looking implant dubbed Stem by its sinister creator Eron (Harrison Gilbertson) can even keep up a dialogue with Grey Trace, and the prospect of sharing your body with another conscious entity turns out to be just as horrifying as it sounds on paper.
That’s a radical departure from the long interludes during which Whannell proves himself intentionally funny, a serviceable hand at the self-aware schlock bit. Grey Trace’s quest to avenge his dead wife leads him to an exceptionally curt hacker who requests upfront that he not inquire about their gender identity. The leader of the toughs that ruined Grey Trace’s life has been decked out with in-flesh weaponry, the most ridiculous being a swarm of nanobots emitted via sneeze that can fly up an enemy’s nostril and shred their brain. We’re treated to the sight of these microscopic droids unsheathing tiny scythes before infiltrating the nose of an insolent barkeep. In that moment, the film truly finds itself.
That still leaves a lot of run time, however. For a technophobe, Whannell’s done some innovative work with new software; his signature move employs an app able to remain fixed on a single object in the frame while following its movement. Apart from this diverting grace note, the camerawork fails to meet the standout production design (touch-screen houses, sleek matte surfaces) halfway. Whannell’s finite reserves of creativity have been meted out in an imbalance, going all in on world-building while giving the fight choreography and the cinematography listlessly documenting it the short shrift.
When humanity’s wire-and-circuit conquerors rise up to claim their position as the new ruling class, Whannell should be the first to smugly declare that he warned us. For the time being, though, he’s having trouble translating his deep-seated unease about the shape of things to come into fully functional entertainment. As much as he may blanch at the comparison, his technique still has a few bugs to be worked out for the next version.
- Upgrade is released in the US on 1 June and in the UK on 31 August
