SFX

UPGRADE

Logan Marshall-Green fights the future (and then some) in Upgrade...

-

Is the new Blumhouse joint really Death Wish with added bionics?

We live in a world where upgrades of all kinds are offered on a daily basis, whether that’s to get the latest mobile phone or the bigger, comfier seat on a 747. In the near-future of Leigh Whannell’s sophomore movie, though, you can literally upgrade yourself by having a microchip implanted into your spine.

“I took the world we live in now,” explains Whannell, “of Alexa and Siri and social media, and whispers of automated cars, and I amplify that, taking it 10 years down the road.”

It’s something of a tonal about-turn for the Australian filmmaker, who cut his teeth as writer on the first Saw movie before working alongside James Wan again on Blumhouse’s Insidious spook series. “In a way I feel like this is my first movie because it’s the first film I’ve written and directed that’s been totally me,” he tells Red Alert of Upgrade. “The first film I directed, Insidious 3, was a sequel and it was a familiar world that I’d done before. I don’t think it was the kind of debut film that people really get excited about!”

Upgrade, though, most certainly is. The film’s slick visuals and cracker-jack pace went down a storm when it premiered at the South By Southwest film festival in March 2018, and it’s not difficult to see why. Mixing the very best of John Carpenter’s gritty alt-futures with very

I took the world we live in now, of Alexa and Siri and social media, and amplified it

modern concerns, Upgrade stars Logan Marshall-Green as Grey Trace, a mechanic who, in Whannell’s own words, “is an analogue man in a digital world. He feels completely out of his time and he hates computers, but he’s living in a world that is run by them.”

After an encounter with a masked gang leaves his wife dead and Grey paralysed in a wheelchair, he begrudging­ly elects to be injected with a sentient microchip called STEM, which restores Grey’s motor functions – and a whole lot more besides. As he attempts to track down the men responsibl­e for his wife’s death, Grey discovers STEM is able to take control of his extremitie­s and turn him into a violently unstoppabl­e fighting machine.

An early scrap in a filthy suburban den matches Marshall-Green’s impressive physicalit­y with dark humour as he fights a criminal. “It’s pure luck that Logan was as good as he was at the physical stuff,” says Whannell of his star. “It wasn’t like we did auditions

where we put the actors through some sort of ninja obstacle course to figure out how physical they were. I just took a gamble. Logan took to it like a duck to water, and just loved it.”

Even more impressive­ly, Marshall-Green helped sell the strange relationsh­ip that forms between Grey and STEM, who’s voiced by Australian actor Simon Maiden. “Only Grey can hear the chip talk,” says Whannell. “It becomes like a relationsh­ip between them and Grey, who hates technology, is pissed off in a specific kind of way with this intrusion. I always thought that relationsh­ip would be interestin­g – to hate something that you need, that you can’t live without. Grey literally can’t walk or stand up without STEM inside his body, so that sets up an interestin­g banter between them.”

strict machine

In order to capture that ping-pong repartee, Whannell stationed Maiden in a corner of the set with a microphone and a monitor, while Marshall-Green was fitted with an earpiece through which he could interact with Maiden live. “Everything you see in the movie where they’re talking, interrupti­ng each other, it’s all done in real time,” says Whannell. “It was great. Everything was there in the script but I definitely think Logan and Simon strengthen­ed a lot of that stuff. Logan loves to spar with an actor; he’s like a boxer, he wants to be there trying things and throwing new things at the actors and see if they can react to things on the fly, so he was doing that with Simon a lot.”

The result is edgy sci-fi that forgoes the kind of futuristic neon-haze visuals typified by Blade Runner and Akira to deliver something harder and unpredicta­ble. “I didn’t want it to feel like this neon-lit, rain-drenched futuristic world with flying cars and robots walking around the streets,” Whannell says. “I wanted something that felt like the actual future will feel.”

As for whether or not he would choose to have STEM implanted or not... “Oh man, I think I would choose to have the chip,” Whannell admits. “As a human being, the most important thing is freedom. Freedom to do anything; freedom to walk, talk, do all this stuff. I hope that medical technology is advancing in this way!” JWi

 ??  ??
 ??  ?? They wondered if there was a McDonald’s around here.
They wondered if there was a McDonald’s around here.
 ??  ??
 ??  ?? The doctors were all taken aback by his perfect derriere.
The doctors were all taken aback by his perfect derriere.
 ??  ?? STEM is the only thing that can restore Grey’s motor functions.
STEM is the only thing that can restore Grey’s motor functions.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Australia