Economy Upgrade

We saw Upgrade (2018) on the recommendation of The Mads. They set expections that this would be a B movie, and that let us enjoy it as such. But it was director Leigh Whannel (Insidious) that sealed the deal.

It stars Logan Marshall-Green as a mechanic who restores old cars. When his wife comes home in a futuristic self-driving car, we understand that this means he is a throwback to an earlier era, and this is the Future. He takes her to drop off his latest at the futuristic underground home of tech billionaire Harrison Gilbertson, who tells him about the latest chip he has built. On their way home, the robocar goes rogue and dumps them into a homeless encampment, where some scumbags kill his wife and leave him paralyzed.

After some ritual humiliation of being crippled, Gilbertson offers him a chance at walking - he’ll implant the new chip, and it will allow him to control his limbs again. He’ll have to keep quiet about it, of course - it won’t be a legal procedure. But they both agree to go rogue for this.

The first thing Marshall-Green wants to do now that he can walk again is hunt down his wife’s killers. The police are helpless, but his implant has started talking to him. It has analyzed the surveillance footage and figured out where one of the assailants hung out - a dive bar called Old Bones. The fight  isn’t going so well, so the implant asks for permission to take direct control of the body. When it does, it kicks major ass.

The fight scenes are very fun, with Marshall-Green fighting like a robot with perfect precision. Gilbertson wants to be a spoilsport and stop the fighting, so he tries to shut down the implant. The implant tells Marshall-Green to find a hacker, so he crawls up with a partially shutdown body to get free of the constraints. When that’s done, he can keep coming for the men who killed his wife.

You’ve probably guessed who is behind the killing and paralyzing. If not - SPOILER - Gilbertson did it to get a test subject. Now that he has implanted the device, and the device has got a hacker to remove any external controls, you definitely can guess how it turns out. If not, no spoilers.

Like the Mads said, this is a B movie, but a fun and well made one. The future tech art direction and special effects work better than some bigger budget movies we’ve seen. The action is fun and interesting - what with the computer chip taking over the human to move with uncanny accuracy and precision. It’s all handled so well, we never wanted more of a budget.