Upgrade (2018)
It knows that it has the confines of a familiar story arc of
a man seeking revenge for the killing of his wife. It knows it has a small
budget which means it cannot do anything too ambitious. It knows that it needs
to have an aesthetic like films much more intelligent and meaningful than
itself.
Upgrade knows something else, too: it has a
get-out-of-jail-free card inside the mind of its protagonist. And that makes it
one of the laziest films I have seen this year.
STEM, the computer implanted in the protagonist Grey’s
spinal cord, can do whatever it wants to with Grey’s body if he gives it
permission to do so. We see this happen near the beginning of the second act in
a fight scene that caught me by surprise with its tone and fun cinematography,
both of which were altered dramatically from the moments before it. As scenes
like this began to make a pattern, however, my mind began to see how the script
was using STEM as an easy escape route for Grey in perilous situations. That
realization took me completely out of the movie and made the second half of the
movie a bore; despite the twists and turns it tried to throw into the mix, Upgrade
could not seem to land them with enough surprise to jar me out of my
disinterest.
One could claim that I am looking at this movie with too
keen of an eye, and they might be right, save the fact that this same movie –
the one that should be given a pass on its narrative structure and plot devices
– tries to go to the philosophically deep place of the upper echelon recent
thinking-man’s science-fiction like Arrival, Ex Machina, and Annihilation.
With its ending, the film opens a can of profound worms that might seem to be
for its benefit, but when leaving the theater all I could do was wonder what
could have been done with the same basic premise of Upgrade while
exploring those deeper themes on which it touches in its final moments.
If I am being honest, I did enjoy the film’s gritty yet
futuristic aesthetic, and some of its cinematography echoed beats of the climax
of Blade Runner in a positive manner. But all those things, despite
their presence, just made me realize even more how much Upgrade wants to
be something more than what it is. It wants to transcend its genre and form to
be a blend of many different influences, but all it manages is a cheap knockoff
of what has come before it.
My recommendation: Skip it.
My grade: 39/100
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