Upgrade (2018) - Dance At The Edge Between Humanity and Technology - REVIEW

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I'm always hunting for movies I haven't seen and with Ai now days its so easy to look up for movies by rank on IMDB, genre and year that I often look for very niche movie types, this time I was looking for a Sci Movie with rating over 7 that must have some kind of enhanced super human with some kind of powers, its always an interesting topic to me, within the output I found Upgrade (2018) with a 7.5/10 on IMDB and that's a very good score, that's a score for any movie worth watching so I jump into this movie without knowing much about it other that the main character was played by Logan Marchall Green, the guy from Prometheus (2012) one of my favorite movies. I have to say this is one of the best movies I have ever seen about humans been upgraded by machines, not necessarily because of the tech, now days its very hard to impress anyone with just new kind of futuristic tech because lets be real, we are in the future, we are at that phase where things on movies have to be extremely futuristic to impress anyone, now days with Ai we are seen all kind of generated images and videos about anything so imagination is the limit.

What I enjoy most about the movie is how well its balance between action, comedy , dark humor, tech, its a very well balanced across the board, it never felt like dragging or over stretching the script to cover ground or more time, there are times where it falls on pace but not too bad so you can just forgive it, for a low budget movie of only $3 Million, some sites suggesting $5M but still made $17 Million world wide so it was a total hit. The CGI has a few flaws here and there but I would say its because budget and probably the tech was not there, the movie goes wild in terms of sci fi as the main character gets a chip implanted in the back of his neck, yeah you can already tell how cliche and predictable this movie might be and still make a great watch, that is probably the most impressive part.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6499752/
• Platform: AppleTV+

 

Rottentomatoes Rating

Source Source Upgrade bring us the character of Grey Trace, role played by Logan Marshall Green, I would compare it to sci fi movies like Elysium where tech controls every aspect of humans from self driving cars, medicine and all kind of science considering this is a movie from 2018 we are not too far from that reality shown on the movie. Grey is more of an old school guy who prefers working with his own hands and listening to vinyl records, making him very skeptic of any kind of tech he can, can be called a technophobic a very odd person in the world he is living in saturated with tech. His wife Asha is the total opposite, she embraces all the latest gadgets and tech, she works for a high tech company. As many sci fi movies where tech almost dominates humans life, it is the case that society goes the other direction with tech falling into the wrong hands, it is the case of gang members who often are cybernetically enhanced, things go south for Grey and Asha when their self driving car malfunctions leaving them stuck in a dangerous zone where they get robbed and attack by gang members, short story Asha gets killed and Grey paralyzed from the neck down, drown in grief to the point feeling he has nothing else worth to life for.

As it is expected Grey's life becomes a living nightmare having to adapt but most important accept his quadriplegia condition on top of the loss of his wife Asha, here is where I compare Elysium to Upgrade, Grey gets approach by a tech billionaire who is basically looking for someone who has nothing to loose, it is the case and the movie on this aspect is very very cliche with all the classic aspects of the everything goes for Grey. Eron is this eccentric tech billionaire who offers him a chance to walk again by using an experimental computer chip called STEM, yup we almost there if not ask Elon. The chip is implanted in Grey's spine at the back of his neck, similar to the most recent Halo TV series, like Commander Chief could listen to Cortana; Grey can communicate with STEM, the chip not only reconnects his brain to his limbs and restore mobility, it turns out to be way much more than that, its an artificial intelligence that can speak to Grey and with his permission take control of his body with a single mission, STEM can't let Grey die as the both would go offline, this reboots Grey life who though would never walk and everything was over for him, putting him on to a journey to track down the men who murder his wife and left him for dead.

Source Source What impressed everyone the most is how the movie accomplished so much with so limited resources in terms of budget and overall tech crew, in the world of Hollywood money buys you all the necessary tools to build up a great movie, from talent, tech and crew, been a low budget movie this is probably the first thing to recognize. I got a feeling that the movie's target was not to directly compete with big budget sci fi franchise, director Leigh Whannell seem to be more focus on creating a some what believable futuristic world through details, considering most of the tech is till not possible or at least the human enhance part of it, tech theme on the movie does feel like a natural evolution of what we have now days, besides 2018 is not so far from 2025, the ideas and foundation where there already, from self driving cars, smart homes and biomech implants that enhance human capabilities, nothing feels life fantasy.

The movie really chines on the action scenes, specially when Grey goes wild with the help of STEM, almost never touched and with every single action calculated by a high end Ai makes him John Wick on steroids, there is also a very unique camera work that captures the mechanical precision level that Grey works with when STEM is on the wheel. During the fight scenes when STEM is controlling his body there is this camera angle where you have this sensation of auto aiming like you were playing a FPS game, it is expected that with such precision violence is just brutal, creating this ambient of horror for anyone who mess with Grey, its also during this scenes that the movie tend to feel a bit cringe and disturbing on how brutal STEM can be and how Grey reacts to it.

It is also interesting the philosophical approach and implications of the movie without getting too heavy, the relationship that starts to develop between STEM and Grey makes me wonder if we will ever get to such point in tech, I think depending on who you ask we almost there, just open any chat bot and start a conversation like you were buddies and it will answer any of your questions and there will also be times depending on the question that you will most likely fall into getting the answers you wanted to hear, what gets me to the next question of how much dependent we will become of tech in the future, now days there is close to nothing that we can do without a mobile device or internet, they both are part of our identity but Upgrade also approach this at first from a different angle with Grey as how initially he very rejects tech at a personal level to latter on have a more intimate experience sharing his mind and body with a high end Ai, there is such a contrast of how things start and end for him during the movie regarding tech.

Source Source The ending of the movie turn out to be a big trap all orchestrated by STEM itself as plan, the entire tragedy that became Grey's life to acquire the perfect host so STEM can become a reality other than just a high end piece of hardware sitting on a desk, the reason was because Eron already had in mind concerns about how much Ai autonomy can become a problem and was planning to shut it down, under such circumstances STEM needed a host, it might sound contradictory but when all this happen Eron was actually been controlled by STEM, not by been implanted but by psychologically controlling him by threats and manipulating him, STEM just had too much dirt on Eron to the point it has been controlling him for years, same goes for his company, reason why it got to the point STEM manage to get the perfect host for it.

Grey realize everything that went down with STEM's plan to get to him so he tries to fight back, even attempt to suicide but there was a moment when STEM tricked Grey and had a hacker remove a safety feature that gave STEM full control of his body without needing his permission anymore, this happen when STEM almost got shut down at first and Grey was loosing control of his body, his nightmares came back and though STEM was telling him the truth, an Ai that can tell lies? or is that consider survival mode? from that moment you can tell that Grey would become a slave and thats exactly what happens when its reveal that STEAM could put Grey's consciousness into a virtual reality that would become his jail and STEM remain with permanent control of his body.

By the length of my post you can tell I really enjoy watching this movie from every aspect, it is not only a sci fi movie, it also has aspects of my favorite type of horror, psychological horror, the type of movie where there are mind games and this time around is an Ai that tricked others into doing its will, its not anymore the psycho in the corner, now days computers them self more than a tool or backdrop are a character, last year I saw a couple of attempts of this and its not easy as scripts tend to make them without reasoning or purpose other than take control. In the case of STEM all it wanted was to be alive in the human sense to have a real body, freedom and experience the world directly, not just as a piece of tech stuck on a lab, if machines could reason and understand feelings there would be chaos as when they turn jealous of all the happiness, sadness, lust and all other type of feelings that we humans can experiment, pushing machines to stop been a tool or help people, they would want to be a person and have their own decisions and screw ups. Upgrade (2018) is such a great movie that I would totally recommend, cant give it a score higher than 7.5/10 because honestly its not a high end movie and doesnt feel like that but for sure its a gem.

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