Blumhouse Productions is a studio known for their medium-sized budgeted films, and often enough, the films stick to the horror/thriller genre. That said, Leigh Whannell's Upgrade is a sudden breath of fresh air for what was becoming an underwhelming production company stuck releasing exactly what you'd expect.
Upgrade takes on a simple narrative, but goes quite a long way with it due to its magnificent world building. Its concept displays a world in which body modification through technological enhancement has become the norm, with underground hackers and criminals using that technology to fit their own agendas.
Grey Trace, an unmodified human, finds himself at the base of this world after him and his partner are attacked, leaving him paralysed for life, and his partner dead. Offered a chip that will grant him access to his entire body again by a shady entrepreneur, Grey uses his newfound strength for one purpose: revenge.
Upgrade uses its writing to maintain a degree of comedy throughout, even when the film feels rather serious and riddled with action, it finds a way to integrate Grey's chip's AI mind into the events, allowing Grey to feel out of control and left watching these crazy feats his body pulls off alongside the viewer. It gives the viewer a chance to connect with the protagonist without the film needing to dive deep into their past and try to give us a larger insight into their personality.
The film manages to maintain the obscurity within the world by showing us these interesting little details that only really appear for a few moments, but are clear enough to allow the viewer to explore just what this world is really like; whether it's an empty warehouse filled with people clearly spending weeks inside a virtual reality all hooked up to wires; or these enhancements to the body that feature deadly microbots that can kill with just a sneeze. And it's so smartly done that it has you wanting to see more.
While the film itself can feel rather predictable, its attention to detail and world building makes it a wonderful viewing experience. It can have you feeling sad that it's ending, having you wish that the concept could be turned into a television series and really unravel itself. But as a film, it feels just that little bit more special knowing it revealed what it wanted to reveal, in a way that allows us to think and explore with our own minds, creating our own concepts. Very few films managed to leave such an impression.