Curator Watchlist
Upgrade
A lean, nasty, high-concept revenge thriller with inventive action, strong visual control, and a gleefully mean streak. It’s not subtle, but it is sharply made and consistently entertaining.
Curator Watchlist
A lean, nasty, high-concept revenge thriller with inventive action, strong visual control, and a gleefully mean streak. It’s not subtle, but it is sharply made and consistently entertaining.
Where to watch: Buy
Thu · 1h 40m
Director: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, Harrison Gilbertson
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.
Leigh Whannell
Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, Harrison Gilbertson
A lean, nasty, high-concept revenge thriller with inventive action, strong visual control, and a gleefully mean streak. It’s not subtle, but it is sharply made and consistently entertaining.
Upgrade is the kind of genre movie that feels like it was built in a lab to hit a very specific sweet spot: grimy near-future sci-fi, revenge fantasy, and extremely efficient action. It takes a familiar setup and pushes it into something nastier and more playful than expected, with a central gimmick that keeps paying off in fresh ways.
What stands out most is the filmmaking. The action is staged with real invention, and the camera often becomes part of the violence rather than just recording it. The movie’s low-budget limitations are visible, but they also give it a scrappy energy that suits the material.
It’s also a pretty cynical piece of work, in a way that some viewers will find exhilarating and others exhausting. The emotional beats are thin on purpose, but the movie knows exactly what kind of engine it is: a revenge machine with a black sense of humor and a mean streak that never lets up.
mary🦋 (3.5★) · 2606 likes
Imagine if ratatouille was all neon and remy went full-on john wick mode and picked some sexy mechanic version of linguini
Sean Baker · 2332 likes
2001 meets Robocop meets The Crow meets Blade Runner meets Her meets Death Wish meets Minority Report. And that's a major compliment. Leigh Whannell kicks ass with this one. Really impressive set pieces and a narrative that doesn't take itself so seriously yet is complex, funny and is constantly delivering. So fun. See it in the theater with a crowd. There must be some legal reason why this isn't called Stem. Watched at AMC Sunset 5
Lucy (3★) · 1755 likes
a little cheesy sometimes, but i did really get a kick out of this. the camerawork in the action scenes alone make it worthwhile. i do have something to say however, and i don’t know where else to put these thoughts, so it’s gonna have to be here: hollywood and the media in general has such an obsession with stories about disabled people becoming able bodied again. through science or even a miracle, rarely are physically disabled characters given spotlight… more
Eli Hayes (4.5★) · 1295 likes
Goddamn. The writing, the direction, the performances, the action & cinematography(!), the editing, the score; holy shit. This is easily the best thing that Leigh Whannell has ever been a part of - better than Saw, better than the very undervalued Dead Silence, even better than Insidious... all three of which I'm a big fan. One of the darkest and most nihilistic films I've seen in some time (fuck, that ending). The formal precision and emotional weight elevate it above its more pulpy, b-aspects, into a poignantly complex and morally intricate piece of cinematic cynicism.
David Sims (4★) · 1190 likes
oh this thing fuckin HONKS
A lean, ultra-violent future thriller with the same stripped-down efficiency, brutal momentum, and comic-book severity.
Shares the slick, mean, crowd-pleasing energy and a taste for escalating genre mayhem.
For viewers who want action built around a bold camera gimmick and relentless kinetic spectacle.
Another sharp, modern genre film from the same filmmaker, with tight control, dread, and emotional damage.
A sleek near-future thriller about surveillance, bodily control, and high-concept action mechanics.
Big, pulpy sci-fi action with identity games, body disruption, and a nasty sense of fun.
For the same pleasure of watching bodies move with impossible precision inside a stylized tech-noir world.
Moody, artificial, and paranoid, with a strong sense of a manipulated world closing in on its protagonist.
A body-and-tech nightmare that turns identity and control into slippery, unsettling genre play.
A revenge story powered by grief, gothic mood, and a dead-eyed sense of punishment.
A foundational vigilante-revenge film for the same blunt, morally corrosive wish-fulfillment impulse.
If the appeal is pure combat choreography and escalating physical punishment, this is essential.
revenge, artificial intelligence, bodily autonomy, grief, cyberpunk, violence, control, dehumanization
cyberpunk, revenge thriller, body horror, AI, dystopian future, brutal action, low-budget sci-fi, dark humor, stylized violence, tech noir