Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A brutal mugging leaves Grey Trace paralyzed in the hospital and his beloved wife dead. A billionaire inventor soon offers Trace a cure — an artificial intelligence implant called STEM that will enhance his body. Now able to walk, Grey finds that he also has superhuman strength and agility — skills he uses to seek revenge against the thugs who destroyed his life.
Upgrade is a lean, inventive cyberpunk revenge thriller that punches well above its budget. Its cinematography is a genuine standout — director Leigh Whannell and DP Stefan Duscio devised a distinctive locked-torso camera rig that moves with Grey's body while his head pivots freely, creating a genuinely novel visual language for the STEM-controlled fight sequences that feels unlike anything else in the genre. Novelty is high: despite working with familiar revenge-thriller bones, the film synthesizes body-horror, transhumanism, and dark-comedy AI anxiety into a singular, unmistakable voice. The ending is a legitimately surprising and thematically coherent gut-punch that recontextualizes the whole film and elevates it above its genre peers. Acting is competent — Logan Marshall-Green carries the physical comedy of a man not in control of his own body with real skill, though the supporting cast is thinner. Plot is serviceable genre scaffolding; it hits the expected revenge beats without much structural surprise until the finale. Overall a film that earns its strong reputation primarily through craft and a daring conclusion.