As a writer-director duo, James Wan and Leigh Whannell really tapped into something when they made “Saw” and the first two “Insidious” films. They somehow figured out an effective recipe for how to elevate essentially low-budget schlock horrors to a level that’s viciously entertaining and fun despite being dirt cheap. When the two went separate ways career-wise, they both utilized that initial approach and mindset to some degree, but it was Whannell who took bigger and perhaps more ambitious swings to perfect his horror game with nuanced tweaks.
After working mostly as an actor and screenwriter, he made the leap to become a director. His directorial debut was rather standard fare (a prequel in the “Insidious” franchise), but his second feature, the 2018 techno-horror “Upgrade,” showed a pretty compelling potential for him as an up-and-coming auteur. He wrote and directed that movie with such confidence that it instantly awed both critics and viewers, making its minuscule $3 million budget often look and feel like 10 times as much.
“Upgrade” follows Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), a married man and auto mechanic in the near future, who becomes paralyzed after a group of cyborgs shoots him in the neck and kills his wife in cold blood. As a quadriplegic, Grey is soon offered a new technology in the form of an AI chip implant — and as we know, merging humans and AI has some huge risks. He reluctantly opts for the procedure, and the AI, called Stem (voiced by Simon Maiden), helps him regain his full motor functions. Later, he learns that his newly-gained robotic skills can help him search for, identify, and take revenge on the men who killed his wife and left him paralyzed.
Upgrade is a blistering, gory, and darkly funny B-horror
Leigh Whannell’s high-concept premise is captivating from the get-go, but it’s really his visionary execution as a director (combined with Stefan Duscio’s fast-paced, measured, and smooth cinematography) that turns “Upgrade” into a lean and mean killer ride. Whannell has little interest in contemplating the complex relationship between man and machine — even if “Upgrade” almost immediately brings to mind Paul Verhoeven’s classic “RoboCop” — and he leans more into the revenge plot and the superb action fused with the kind of unflinching gore that made the “Saw” films the champions of torture porn. Sure, the explicit violence can feel excessive and over-the-top at times, but it’s also exhilaratingly amusing and satisfying for B-movie fans in a way that very few other genre films truly are.
The AI’s cold and slightly mean tone can also remind viewers of Ruben Fleischer’s guilty pleasure “Venom” from the same year — a film reviewers saw as a mess of a movie that wasted Tom Hardy’s talent — in which Hardy’s character bickers with the symbiote living inside him quite similarly to how Grey does with Stem. Frankly, it’s a shame that “Upgrade” never really had the means to become as big a sensation commercially as the Marvel outing, remaining a rather modest box office success that made a little over $16 million worldwide.
One thing’s for sure, though: Whannell’s second feature is an absolute treat and a must-watch for B-horror and revenge movie fans. Not to mention that it’s a masterclass in how to squeeze the last drop out of a low-budget flick that, frankly, should be a case study for every aspiring filmmaker. If you missed it for some reason back then, you can definitely fix that since “Upgrade” is now streaming on Netflix.
