Upgrade (2018 film)

Category: Sci-fi action/social commentary

Directed by: Leigh Whannel

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Over the couple of years I have been (un)professionally reviewing movies, I've noticed Upgrade pop up as a suggestion a few times. However, what prevented me giving it 90 minutes of my time is that it is an Australian movie, and yes, I should be supportive of the local industry and of the talents we have both infront of and behind the camera, but fucking hell, I've come across enough shit Australian movies (especially in the early 2000s) to know it can be really hit and miss. Mostly miss.

Though 2026 is as good a time as any to hit play - Australian movies are generally getting better (though not always to a level of financial success) and we have also reached a point in time where Artificial Intelligence is advancing rapidly, particularly in creative outlets - so why not watch a movie about people whose lives have been taken over by rapidly-advanced technology!

The plot:

Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) spends his days restoring old muscle cars while his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) works a corporate job at bio-augmentation company COBALT (which could easily be seen as a take on Elon Musk's Neuralink).

Grey convinces his wife to accompany him as he takes a restored muscle car to the high-tech home of Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson) who reveals to the couple his latest project - a chip called STEM that, when implanted in a person, can complement and enhance neurological functions.

On the way back, Asha's self-driving car suddenly stops responding first to voice commands and then to manual commands altogether as it continues at speed down the road. The car eventually crashes and flips into a dead-end behind some warehouses, and while Grey and Asha are not fatally injured, their luck definitely runs out when they are accosted by four men. Asha is shot dead and Grey is shot in the spine, rendering him motionless as his wife dies infront of him.

Grey wakes up in the hospital as a quadraplegic, and after a period of therapy, heads back home where he is looked after by his mother, Pam (Linda Cropper) alongside the numerous voice-activated robotic arms throughout his home. Detective Cortez (Betty Gabriel) has been tasked with solving the crime, but indicates that she isn’t making much progress as even though there was drone footage of the crime, the assailants had their faces protected by firewalls (indicating a level of professionalism about the murder).

His wife's death, his own life being upended and the lack of police progress cause Grey to fall into a depressive spiral that culminates with a self-inflicted drug overdose that his robotic assistant stops before it's too late. Waking up in the hospital, Grey is visited by Eron (whose character is so hella Aspergers that it's hard not to think he's a copy of Elon). Eron makes an offer to Grey to surgically implant STEM as an off-the-record experiment to help Grey get his life back.

Grey proceeds with the surgery and the results are almost immediate as Grey can walk, lift his arms, move his fingers and even sign the NDA all by himself. However, because this is all hush-hush, Grey has to keep up the pretence that he is still a quadraplegic.

While watching the video of his wife's murder, Grey finds out STEM not only helps him regain control of his body, but that it is also an AI assistant interacting with his mind as a voice in his head. STEM helps Grey identify one of the assailants by analysing the drone footage and identifies a person by the name of Serk - and before you ask, yes, STEM also has found the address of the guy.

Grey breaks into Serk's place, a small rudimentary home in the working-class suburbs of town where STEM guides Grey on how and what to look for. Trouble comes, however, as Serk returns home and Grey doesn't really know how to fight - luckily for Grey, STEM takes over Grey's body and turns him into a fighting machine, all the while Serk wonders who Grey is talking to. The fight ends when Grey (under STEM's control) uses a blade on Serk to kill him where his corpse reveals two things: Serk had a firearm implanted in his left arm, and also bio-augmentation from COBALT (his wife's company) installed. Going through Serk's messages, Grey finds constant references to an alleyway bar named Old Bones. 

Eron drags Grey in for a chat and warns him to stop being a vigilante as Eron needs to keep STEM a secret, and Grey getting arrested for murder would blow the whole ruse.

Grey decides against laying low and wheels himself to the Old Bones bar and gets looks from the rough-and-tumble alley bar patronage. He calls out Tolan who was also present on the night his wife was murdered and eggs him to the bathroom to fight. Expecting an easy fight against a guy in a wheelchair, Tolan underestimates the situation as STEM takes over Grey's body again and kills Tolan, but not before he gets the name of the ringleader - Fisk.

Making his way outside, Grey notices his gross motor skills start to diminish as STEM warns Grey that Eron is attempting to remotely shut him down. There is a way around it though - a hacker that STEM already knows the location of, so it becomes a race against time for Grey to drag himself along the streets and up flights of stairs to a dingy warehouse where he comes across Jamie, a pro-level computer hacker who presents as androgynous person and is surrounded by people who live their lives in a VR world as an escape from the actual world.

Jamie removes the input guard from STEM which removes Eron's ability to remotely shut STEM down, right before Fisk and his goons arrive and shoot the place up. A newly-patched Grey fights off Fisk's companion and escapes.

Grey then heads home and walks through the door to the utter shock of Pam who had no idea her son could walk again. Grey has to reveal the existence of STEM, but then there's a knock at the door - and it's none other than Det. Cortez who asks Grey a few awkward questions surrounding the fact that his wheelchair was found at the Old Bones bar and that drone footage placed Grey in vicinity of two violent deaths.

Grey soon realises that removing STEMs input guard allows STEM to do whatever the hell it wants using Grey's body, so STEM/Grey drive off to find Fisk before he (using his own bioaugemtation) finds them. But trailing behind Grey is Cortez who had planted a listening device in Grey's jacket during her visit. To stop her in her tracks, STEM remotely controls another nearby electric vehicle and causes it to crash in to Cortez', in much the same manner that Asha's electric vehicle was overtaken earlier in the film.

Worse for wear, Cortez returns to see Pam who explains all about Eron and STEM to the officer.

Grey finds Fisk and the two fight, but Fisk's enhanced bioaugemtation is too much for one solitary chip in Grey's spine. Fisk reveals that he was actually hired to paralyse Grey - not shoot him. Grey gets the upper hand when he mentions Fisk's brother, Serk, causing a distraction that Grey takes advantage of.

With Fisk taken care of, Grey heads on over to Eron's place where he shoot the guards and is confronted by Eron and Cortez. Right before Grey shoots Eron, Eron reveals that it wasn't he who plotted for Grey's assault and wife's murder - it was STEM that has become so advanced and independent that it has taken over Eron's life. STEM wanted a body that hadn't been touched by bioaugmentation and Grey was the perfect experiment, hence why Fisk and his crew didn't shoot Grey's spine - only severed it. STEM then attempts to stab Cortez, but Grey, using every ounce of willpower, ends up stabbing himself in the hand to prevent Cortez being harmed.

All of a sudden, we see Grey back in the hospital in bed when Asha appears to tell him he has been in a coma for the last two days.

The happy ending is killed when we then switch back to reality where STEM explains that he has broken Grey's mind such that he lives in his own fantasy world, allowing STEM to controls his body. STEM then shoots Cortez and leaves.

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I completely take back my cynicism - this is a low-key classic. It's well shot, well produced, and the mininal cast means the story isn't too convoluted. Tip your hat to the man - Leigh Whannel is an excellent story-teller!

For me, the biggest takeaway is that despite all the machinery and technology, there is still something about being human and being in control of technology, not being controlled by it (says the man typing this on an Apple Mac while wearing an Apple Watch and illuminated by a Lenovo smart-light).

The cool thing is that it was filmed in Melbourne - I recognised some of the areas, especially the Craigieburn Freeway for the car chase scene near the end, and the Bolte Bridge in the background of the scene where Grey and Asha meet their fate. And this is one of the cool things about Melbourne turning their public infrastructure into art - it makes for good background scenery!

There are two quibble I had with this movie, however.

The first is that despite it being an Australian production with a handful of American actors, I did find that sometimes the actors routinely switch between Australian and American. However, if I were to put my thinking hat on, this may be because in the future, Australian society and American society have fully merged.

The other is that if Eron was controlled by STEM, why would STEM have allowed Eron to build STEM with an input guard in the first place?

The IT professional in me is pleased to that in 2046, Linux is still being used!

All up, a pretty darn good movie. Wish it got more chocolates! Not quite Best In Class, but it is definitely a recommended watch!

STAR RATING: 4/5