Netflix‘s carousel of movies is always changing, with new features being added every week and some disappearing just as quickly. The streamer currently boasts some major titles like 2015’s The Martian and 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, plus full franchises like The Maze Runner, plus their original releases like They Cloned Tyrone, the Rebel Moon movies, and The Adam Project. With all the sci-fi movies currently streaming on Netflix, though, it’s easy for great titles to get lost in the shuffle, and one of the best movies from the genre is hiding in plain sight.
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Hailing from Leigh Whannell, one of the minds behind the Saw and Insidious franchises, 2018’s Upgrade became a dark horse in the sci-fi genre upon its release and has managed to maintain that position in the seven years since. The good news for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie at all, or maybe not since it first came out, is that this little firecracker of a sci-fi picture is streaming on Netflix right now, though you may not know it from glancing at their library.
Upgrade Is an Underrated Sci-fi Gem
Upgrade immediately puts its sci-fi world on display, introducing the audience to a story where companies develop and sell cybernetic enhancements for humans. The film tells the story of Grey (Logan Marshall-Green), a mechanic whose wife works for one of these companies. One night, after the two are attacked by a group of thugs and his wife is killed, Grey is left paralyzed and given the opportunity to have an implant that will give him the ability to walk again. After having the implant, called STEM, put in, Grey realizes that the AI helping him move his body now has even more potential after it offers to help him hunt down and get revenge on the people who did this to him and killed his wife.
Though Upgrade comes fully equipped with an interesting story, it has two major assets working in its favor. The first is its grandiose science fiction world that it sets up and plays in, giving us something not too far away from our current world, but which is just different enough that it can capture our imaginations. The second of these is the stylistic direction from Whannell, who wrote and directed the movie. In the sequences when STEM takes control of Grey’s body, he uses slick camera movement to make these robot-controlling-a-human-body action scenes feel unique and radiate a specific kind of energy.
The most impressive thing about Upgrade and its expansive science fiction world, though, is that the movie was made quite cheaply by studio movie standards. Upgrade carried a production budget of $3 million, putting it far out of reach from another sci-fi staple from 2018 like Ready Player One, which reportedly cost more than $155 million.
Upgrade Should Have a Sequel By Now
Upgrade concludes with a gut-punch of an ending. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that STEM is actually self-aware and has desires to take over Grey’s mind along with his body. Despite Grey shooting himself in the head to try and prevent this, he survives, for the final minutes to reveal that STEM has succeeded in his goal and now has control of Grey’s body, while Grey appears caught in an imaginary dreamworld, unaware of it all.
The powerful final moments of Upgrade do wrap up its story in a major way, but what it leaves the audience with is a major curiosity about what happens next. Though the story itself has largely ended, there’s potential for something else, or even just an expansion of this world. That said, writer/director Leigh Whannell was clear that he had no sequel plans for the film when it was released, but his tune did change after the movie was a bit of a box office surprise.
Plans were eventually confirmed for an Upgrade TV series, with the initial report revealing that the show would be set years after the movie and instead be an expansion of the larger universe of the film rather than a direct sequel. According to that report, the series would focus on “an evolved version of STEM and a new host – imagining a world in which the government repurposes STEM to help curb criminal activity.” That announcement came in May of 2020, with no additional news about its status in the five years since.
Upgrade Makes Marvel Fans Do a Double Take
A hilarious coincidence that happened to arrive with the release of Upgrade is that just a few months after it was released came the long-awaited Venom feature film. It didn’t take long for film fans to start noticing a surprising amount of synergy between the two movies. Both Upgrade and Venom deal with a human character that ends up playing host to a surprising outside force: the STEM chip in Upgrade and the alien symbiote in Venom. With the characters now augmented by these new forces, they end up taking on surprising roles as their powers allow them enhanced fighting abilities and a bizarre new look on life
The biggest element that makes people think of these two films as the same movie isn’t even in their plot similarities; it’s in their stars. Venom, of course, stars Tom Hardy, while Upgrade stars Logan Marshall-Green. The two actors have long been compared to each other as having similar looks, but when you take on the fact that they both star in movies the same year that have similar plot outlines, it just confuses everyone.
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