Upgrade is a 2018 cyberpunk action thriller written and directed by Leigh Whannell, the co-creator of Saw and Insidious who'd go on to make The Invisible Man, produced on a tiny budget through Blumhouse. It stars Logan Marshall-Green as Grey Trace, a near-future technophobe whose life is shattered when an attack leaves him paralysed and kills his wife. A reclusive tech billionaire then offers him an experimental AI chip called STEM, which restores his movement and, it turns out, a good deal more. I'll be honest about my process here: I finished this film, then took a shower, did a load of laundry, and made my wife dinner, all to delay writing this, because I came away unsure what I actually wanted to say about it.

Let me start with Logan Marshall-Green, because he's the anchor. I spent most of the film trying to place where I knew him from, and the answer turned out to be Prometheus, a film I've already covered. In Upgrade, he's excellent. He delivers a committed, impressive performance and provides the steady centre that the whole thing relies on. He's the kind of grounded, likeable lead that makes you buy into a fairly outlandish premise, and he carries that weight comfortably.

The action, though, is the genuine headline, and it's a blast. When STEM takes control of Grey's body, the camera physically locks onto him and moves with him, which gives the fight scenes a jerky, robotic, almost unnatural quality I hadn't really seen done this way before. It's a brilliant, low-cost solution that turns a budget limitation into a signature style, and it works every single time it happens. I won't pretend the film is flawless, because no film is, but I genuinely have no complaints about anything I actually saw on screen. I enjoyed Grey's motivation, and I loved the film's take on AI through STEM, a coldly funny presence that drives a lot of the film's personality.

So here's my honest struggle. I liked this a lot, and yet I can't quite work out why I'm not pushing the score higher, or why I'm not sprinting out the door to tell everyone I know to watch it. After sitting with it, I think there are two reasons. The first is that, even for a film this short, there are beats that didn't fully belong. The wife's death, which the trailer shows so it's no spoiler, happens so suddenly that I never had the chance to form a real bond with her character. As a result, the grief that's meant to fuel the entire story didn't hit me the way it was clearly designed to. I wish the film had spent more time with her first. The second reason is simpler: almost every other character surrounding Logan just wasn't very good, which left a lot resting on his shoulders and STEM's voice alone.