I’ve been meaning to watch this for a while, the trailer looked so appealing and I finally found some time to check it out.

Upgrade is a cyberpunk Revenge body-horror Movie about a young mechanic called Grey Trace (played by Logan Marshall-Green) who loses his wife and becomes paralyzed after their car malfunctions and crashes in a homeless camp where four unknown men arrive and shoot his wife while leaving him to bleed out to death. Once awake he gets a visit by one of his clients – a famous tech innovator called Eron, who offers to help him and cure him by making him something more than just a man by inserting a chip inside him. Grey is reluctant at first but gets persuaded to go through with it.

After the procedure, Grey quickly starts recovering and becomes able to move again. However, once he gets used to it he starts hearing a voice. Turns out that STEM (the chip) can actually speak to him and he is basically a superpowerful computer, the most powerful AI and it’s inside him. With his help, he goes forth to take his revenge for the loss of his wife.

Honestly, I don’t really see this film as a body-horror. I guess I’ve been desensitized too much but if it was me I’d just classify it as an action film or something. The gore was very minimal and there wasn’t really anything shocking or disturbing. The movie itself wasn’t bad. The fight scenes were actually pretty well made. Watching Logan Marshall-Green fight while acting that he is not in control of his body was very entertaining. However plot-wise it was very unimpressive. When it comes to revenge flicks, you can’t really expect much of course but still… They could have made it less predictable. Considering the lowish budget it is still a decent film though and at the end of the day, it was entertaining.

Final verdict: 7/10