I see what you did there, History Channel.
Saturday, July 21, 2018
In Seach Of... Spock?
I see what you did there, History Channel.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
It Came From The Cineplex: Upgrade
Whannell is an Australian writer and director, as well as an actor and producer. He previously wrote Saw (both the original short film and the full-length feature), Saw II, Saw III, Dead Silence, Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2, Cooties (which I liked quite a bit) and The Mule (Which is about a man transporting drugs in his rectum, who has to keep from pooping them out for four day or else be arrested. No, really) and Insidious: Chapter 3.
He also played the character of Specs in Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2, Insidious: Chapter and Insidious: The Last Key. And he had a small part in The Bye Bye Man, which I'm sure he considers his proudest achievement.
Whannell made his directorial debut with Insidious: The Last Key.
Upgrade is a decent little concoction that's a combination of thoughtful science fiction, superhero origin story, revenge movie and body horror. It feels like a throwback to the kind of film Arnold Schwarzenegger regularly made in the 1980s and 1990s. That's a good thing, by the way!
It's also a lean, tightly constructed movie that's fast paced and gets right down to business. Every scene is there for a reason and leads directly into the next, with absolutely no fat or superfluous dialogue or side quests. That's a rarity in these days of bloated, big budget effects movies.
It's a smartly written and thought provoking film, right up until the end. Unfortunately there's a massive plot hole in the final minutes that pretty much torpedoes the entire film. If you can manage to overlook that, then you'll likely have a good time.
The acting's all over the place, ranging from surprisingly good to shocking bad. Star Logan Marshall-Green is the MVP, playing a man slowly being taken over by a cybernetic intelligence, and becoming a passenger in his own body.
Upgrade's also a dark and nasty little film, featuring a surprising amount of gore. I guess that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, seeing it was written and directed by the creator of the Saw franchise.
So far the movie's grossed a little under $12 million against its "$3 to $5 million" budget (I couldn't find an exact figure). That makes it a very mild success.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! THIS IS A MOVIE BEST SEEN "COLD." YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
The Plot:
Sometime in the near future, humanity has begun augmenting itself with cybernetic parts. Grey Trace (played by Logan Marshall-Green), is a traditional, hands-on kind of guy who shuns technology, and loves to restore old muscle cars. His wife Asha is just the opposite— she works for a high-tech company called Cobalt, and depends on the couples' smart home for everything.
Grey finishes working on a car for a client, and asks Asha to help him deliver it. They drive it to the advanced underground home of Eron Keen, a young, reclusive billionaire genius. While there, the social awkward Eron shows them his next innovation— an advanced computer chip called "STEM," which he claims will revolutionize the medical field. He tells them STEM could be used to restore mobility to paralyzed patients (FORESHADOWING ALERT!).
As they return home, Grey and Asha engage in witty romantic banter. Suddenly their self-driving car is hacked by someone. It speeds through the streets and flips over several times in a junkyard. As they come to, they're dragged from the wrecked car by several goons.
The leader of these thugs shoots Asha in the gut, as a horrified Grey looks on. When he tries to fight back, one of the goons shoots Grey in the spine, instantly paralyzing him from the neck down. They leave him for dead and scatter. Unable to move, Grey helplessly watches as Asha dies a few feet away from him. Well that all got dark quickly!
Cut to Grey recovering in the hospital, as he stares despondently out the window. Eventually he's sent home, where he's given a high-tech wheelchair that does virtually everything for him. His mother Pam moves in to help him adjust, as Grey falls into a deep depression.
Grey's visited by Detective Cortez, who's working on Asha's murder case. Unfortunately she has no leads and says she may never find out who's responsible.
Despondent, Grey tries to commit suicide by ordering his automated chair to give him an overdose of pain meds. The chair feeds him pill after pill, but stops when it reaches the maximum daily dose. He becomes even more depressed when he realizes he can't even kill himself.
A few days later Grey's visited by Eron, who has a proposition for him. He offers to implant STEM into Grey's spinal cord, which will bypass his injury and allow him to walk again. Grey, who's not a fan of technology, tells him to get lost. Eron, who we've seen has no idea how to act around people, suddenly becomes an expert in psychology, and tells Grey that Asha would want him to walk again. Grey finally agrees.
But Eron's offer comes with a catch— the STEM chip hasn't been approved by the medical community, so he tells Grey he has to keep the operation a secret. Grey agrees, even signing (how?) a non-disclosure agreement.
Eron implants the STEM chip into Grey's neck. He wakes up sometime later, and within minutes he's up and moving around, without needing to relearn how to walk. That STEM must be one hell of a microchip!
Grey, who now has a reason to live again, returns home. Some time later he's shocked when he hears a voice in his head. It turns out it's STEM, which, in addition to being able to restore Grey's mobility, apparently also contains a sophisticated artificial intelligence. I guess Eron forgot to mention that.
After chatting a while, STEM casually mentions he's been studying drone footage of Asha's murder. He plays the recording, which shows one of the men shooting Asha with a gun implanted in his hand. STEM analyzes the man's face, and says his name is Fisk.
Grey starts to call Cortez, but STEM warns that she'll want to know where he got his info. STEM discovers the identity of another of the goons, whose name is Serk. He then suggests Grey pay him a visit.
Grey sneaks out and goes to Serk's address. He waits for him to leave, then breaks into his house. He checks his emails and finds several from the Old Dog bar. Just then Serk returns, sees Grey and attacks. Grey's no match for the thug, and gets his ass handed to him. STEM asks Grey for permission to temporarily take over his body, and he quickly agrees.
Under STEM's control, Grey expertly dodges Serk's attacks and strikes back with brutal and precise punches. Serk tries to stab Grey, but STEM grabs the knife from him and practically slices off the top of his head, killing him. STEM returns control to Grey, who vomits at what "he" just did. STEM tells Grey he'll need to remove all traces of his presence from the apartment.
Later Eron visits Grey again. He says he's been monitoring his whereabouts, and knows he went to Serk's house and killed him. He reminds Grey of his nondisclosure agreement, and orders him to knock off his little investigation.
Cortez, who's apparently the only cop in the city, sees Serk's body in the morgue. She reviews some more convenient drone footage of his house, and sees Grey zoom by in his motorized wheelchair. Intrigued, she pays Grey a visit and questions why he was near Serk's home at the time of his death. Grey asks if she's seriously considering a quadriplegic as a suspect.
After Cortez leaves, Grey drives his wheelchair to the Old Dog, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. He awkwardly asks anyone who had anything to do with Asha's murder to step forward. A man named Tolan says he was there, grabs Grey's wheelchair and pushes him into the bathroom. Two other thugs follow, and Tolan tells Grey that cripple or not, he's gonna mess him up.
Of course Grey tells STEM to take over, and he easily beats the thugs senseless. STEM then starts torturing Tolan with a knife, until he finally blurts out that the man who killed Asha was named Fisk. STEM then kills Tolan for his trouble.
Suddenly STEM says he detects Eron trying to shut him down. He says if that happens, Grey will be helpless once again. He gives Grey the address of a hacker named Jamie, who can protect him from Aaron. Grey runs out of the bar, leaving his wheelchair behind.
A little later Fisk shows up at the Old Dog, where he finds his pal Tolan's body. As a cyborg, Tolan had a bionic eye, which Fisk uses to see "Grey" torturing and killing him. He turns his attention to the bartender, furious with him for doing nothing as Tolan was murdered. Fisk, who also has cybernetic enhancements, sneezes out a cloud of nanites. They float over to the bartender and infiltrate his body, liquefying him from the inside out.
Grey arrives at Jamie's apartment, just as Eron starts shutting down STEM. He loses control of his legs, and begins crawling up the stairs. STEM gives Grey a reboot code, and tells him to write it on his arm. Grey manages to make it to Jamie's apartment, and gives her a wad of cash. She drags him inside.
Jamie uses the reboot code to restore STEM and protect him from further meddling. Unfortunately it'll take several minutes for him to reboot, leaving Grey helpless. Just then Jamie glances at a security camera, where she sees Fisk and his cyborg henchman Jeffries enter the building. She and her hacker pals vamoose, leaving Grey behind.
Fisk enters Jamie's apartment, where he finds the helpless Grey. Just as they're about to kill him, STEM comes back online. He takes over Grey's body, and there's a big setpiece battle between the three cyborgs. Jeffries corners Grey and tries to shoot him with his literal hand gun. STEM grabs Jeffries' gun arm and causes him to shoot himself in the head. STEM/Grey then escapes.
Grey returns home, where an astonished Pam sees him walking. He tells her about STEM, but swears her to secrecy. Cortez shows up again, wondering why Grey's wheelchair was found at the scene of another murder. He makes up a story about being attacked by muggers, and a dubious Cortez pretends to buy it and leaves.
Grey then roars off in his car, intending to find and kill Fisk once and for all. Unknown to him, Cortez follows him in her own car. STEM notes that Cortez placed a bug in Grey's jacket. He finds it and destroys it. There's another big action setpiece in which Cortez chases after Grey on a crowded highway. Finally STEM takes control of a self-driving car and slams it into Cortez's manually-driven auto, allowing Grey to get away.
STEM tracks Fisk to his home, and Grey confronts him there. They have another big cyborg battle, but it goes badly for Grey, as Fisk can anticipate his every move. Eventually STEM manages to get the upper hand. Fisk admits he and his cyborg ex-mercenary pals were hired to attack Grey, and Asha getting in the way was just a bonus. Enraged, Grey shoves Fisk backward, impaling him on a piece of glass that runs through his head.
Grey checks Fisk's phone and hears a message from Eron, ordering him to go after Grey.
Grey returns to Eron's lab, intending to kill him. He accuses Eron of having him crippled, just so he'd have a test subject for his STEM project. He pulls a gun on Eron, but just then Cortez somehow appears and orders him to stand down.
Eron confesses the plan wasn't his idea, but STEM's. As STEM grew more and more intelligent, it decided it wanted a human body. Somehow STEM blackmailed Eron into hiring Fisk and crew to cripple Grey. Just how a microchip can blackmail a person is left to our imaginations.
Horrified, Grey stabs himself in the hand to prevent him from killing anyone. STEM then takes control of his body without permission. He stabs Eron in the head and incapacitates Cortez. Grey struggles mightily to regain control over his own body. He manages to raise his gun and shoot himself in the neck, destroying STEM.
Grey wakes up in the hospital again. He's shocked when he sees Asha sitting at his bedside. When he asks what's going on, she tells him he's been in a coma since the accident. Grey and Asha embrace, as they have their lives back. Jesus Christ! Not the old "It Was All A Dream" ending!
Smash cut back to Fisk's house, where STEM is now completely in control of Grey's body. He monologues to Cortez that he placed Grey's consciousness in a fantasy world inside his head, where he'll live out his life with Asha and never bother him again. He gloats that he finally has a body of his own, and reveals he has big plans for the world. He kills Cortez and leaves.
Thoughts:
• For some reason, instead of using traditional onscreen text, the opening credits are spoken by a female voiceover, accompanied by a visual soundwave.
• The film was originally titled STEM, which makes some amount of sense. "Upgrade" is catchier and more descriptive though, so I can see why they changed it.
Whannell made his directorial debut with Insidious: The Last Key.
Upgrade is a decent little concoction that's a combination of thoughtful science fiction, superhero origin story, revenge movie and body horror. It feels like a throwback to the kind of film Arnold Schwarzenegger regularly made in the 1980s and 1990s. That's a good thing, by the way!
It's also a lean, tightly constructed movie that's fast paced and gets right down to business. Every scene is there for a reason and leads directly into the next, with absolutely no fat or superfluous dialogue or side quests. That's a rarity in these days of bloated, big budget effects movies.
It's a smartly written and thought provoking film, right up until the end. Unfortunately there's a massive plot hole in the final minutes that pretty much torpedoes the entire film. If you can manage to overlook that, then you'll likely have a good time.
The acting's all over the place, ranging from surprisingly good to shocking bad. Star Logan Marshall-Green is the MVP, playing a man slowly being taken over by a cybernetic intelligence, and becoming a passenger in his own body.
Upgrade's also a dark and nasty little film, featuring a surprising amount of gore. I guess that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, seeing it was written and directed by the creator of the Saw franchise.
So far the movie's grossed a little under $12 million against its "$3 to $5 million" budget (I couldn't find an exact figure). That makes it a very mild success.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! THIS IS A MOVIE BEST SEEN "COLD." YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
The Plot:
Sometime in the near future, humanity has begun augmenting itself with cybernetic parts. Grey Trace (played by Logan Marshall-Green), is a traditional, hands-on kind of guy who shuns technology, and loves to restore old muscle cars. His wife Asha is just the opposite— she works for a high-tech company called Cobalt, and depends on the couples' smart home for everything.
Grey finishes working on a car for a client, and asks Asha to help him deliver it. They drive it to the advanced underground home of Eron Keen, a young, reclusive billionaire genius. While there, the social awkward Eron shows them his next innovation— an advanced computer chip called "STEM," which he claims will revolutionize the medical field. He tells them STEM could be used to restore mobility to paralyzed patients (FORESHADOWING ALERT!).
As they return home, Grey and Asha engage in witty romantic banter. Suddenly their self-driving car is hacked by someone. It speeds through the streets and flips over several times in a junkyard. As they come to, they're dragged from the wrecked car by several goons.
The leader of these thugs shoots Asha in the gut, as a horrified Grey looks on. When he tries to fight back, one of the goons shoots Grey in the spine, instantly paralyzing him from the neck down. They leave him for dead and scatter. Unable to move, Grey helplessly watches as Asha dies a few feet away from him. Well that all got dark quickly!
Cut to Grey recovering in the hospital, as he stares despondently out the window. Eventually he's sent home, where he's given a high-tech wheelchair that does virtually everything for him. His mother Pam moves in to help him adjust, as Grey falls into a deep depression.
Grey's visited by Detective Cortez, who's working on Asha's murder case. Unfortunately she has no leads and says she may never find out who's responsible.
Despondent, Grey tries to commit suicide by ordering his automated chair to give him an overdose of pain meds. The chair feeds him pill after pill, but stops when it reaches the maximum daily dose. He becomes even more depressed when he realizes he can't even kill himself.
A few days later Grey's visited by Eron, who has a proposition for him. He offers to implant STEM into Grey's spinal cord, which will bypass his injury and allow him to walk again. Grey, who's not a fan of technology, tells him to get lost. Eron, who we've seen has no idea how to act around people, suddenly becomes an expert in psychology, and tells Grey that Asha would want him to walk again. Grey finally agrees.
But Eron's offer comes with a catch— the STEM chip hasn't been approved by the medical community, so he tells Grey he has to keep the operation a secret. Grey agrees, even signing (how?) a non-disclosure agreement.
Eron implants the STEM chip into Grey's neck. He wakes up sometime later, and within minutes he's up and moving around, without needing to relearn how to walk. That STEM must be one hell of a microchip!
Grey, who now has a reason to live again, returns home. Some time later he's shocked when he hears a voice in his head. It turns out it's STEM, which, in addition to being able to restore Grey's mobility, apparently also contains a sophisticated artificial intelligence. I guess Eron forgot to mention that.
After chatting a while, STEM casually mentions he's been studying drone footage of Asha's murder. He plays the recording, which shows one of the men shooting Asha with a gun implanted in his hand. STEM analyzes the man's face, and says his name is Fisk.
Grey starts to call Cortez, but STEM warns that she'll want to know where he got his info. STEM discovers the identity of another of the goons, whose name is Serk. He then suggests Grey pay him a visit.
Grey sneaks out and goes to Serk's address. He waits for him to leave, then breaks into his house. He checks his emails and finds several from the Old Dog bar. Just then Serk returns, sees Grey and attacks. Grey's no match for the thug, and gets his ass handed to him. STEM asks Grey for permission to temporarily take over his body, and he quickly agrees.
Under STEM's control, Grey expertly dodges Serk's attacks and strikes back with brutal and precise punches. Serk tries to stab Grey, but STEM grabs the knife from him and practically slices off the top of his head, killing him. STEM returns control to Grey, who vomits at what "he" just did. STEM tells Grey he'll need to remove all traces of his presence from the apartment.
Later Eron visits Grey again. He says he's been monitoring his whereabouts, and knows he went to Serk's house and killed him. He reminds Grey of his nondisclosure agreement, and orders him to knock off his little investigation.
Cortez, who's apparently the only cop in the city, sees Serk's body in the morgue. She reviews some more convenient drone footage of his house, and sees Grey zoom by in his motorized wheelchair. Intrigued, she pays Grey a visit and questions why he was near Serk's home at the time of his death. Grey asks if she's seriously considering a quadriplegic as a suspect.
After Cortez leaves, Grey drives his wheelchair to the Old Dog, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. He awkwardly asks anyone who had anything to do with Asha's murder to step forward. A man named Tolan says he was there, grabs Grey's wheelchair and pushes him into the bathroom. Two other thugs follow, and Tolan tells Grey that cripple or not, he's gonna mess him up.
Of course Grey tells STEM to take over, and he easily beats the thugs senseless. STEM then starts torturing Tolan with a knife, until he finally blurts out that the man who killed Asha was named Fisk. STEM then kills Tolan for his trouble.
Suddenly STEM says he detects Eron trying to shut him down. He says if that happens, Grey will be helpless once again. He gives Grey the address of a hacker named Jamie, who can protect him from Aaron. Grey runs out of the bar, leaving his wheelchair behind.
A little later Fisk shows up at the Old Dog, where he finds his pal Tolan's body. As a cyborg, Tolan had a bionic eye, which Fisk uses to see "Grey" torturing and killing him. He turns his attention to the bartender, furious with him for doing nothing as Tolan was murdered. Fisk, who also has cybernetic enhancements, sneezes out a cloud of nanites. They float over to the bartender and infiltrate his body, liquefying him from the inside out.
Grey arrives at Jamie's apartment, just as Eron starts shutting down STEM. He loses control of his legs, and begins crawling up the stairs. STEM gives Grey a reboot code, and tells him to write it on his arm. Grey manages to make it to Jamie's apartment, and gives her a wad of cash. She drags him inside.
Jamie uses the reboot code to restore STEM and protect him from further meddling. Unfortunately it'll take several minutes for him to reboot, leaving Grey helpless. Just then Jamie glances at a security camera, where she sees Fisk and his cyborg henchman Jeffries enter the building. She and her hacker pals vamoose, leaving Grey behind.
Fisk enters Jamie's apartment, where he finds the helpless Grey. Just as they're about to kill him, STEM comes back online. He takes over Grey's body, and there's a big setpiece battle between the three cyborgs. Jeffries corners Grey and tries to shoot him with his literal hand gun. STEM grabs Jeffries' gun arm and causes him to shoot himself in the head. STEM/Grey then escapes.
Grey returns home, where an astonished Pam sees him walking. He tells her about STEM, but swears her to secrecy. Cortez shows up again, wondering why Grey's wheelchair was found at the scene of another murder. He makes up a story about being attacked by muggers, and a dubious Cortez pretends to buy it and leaves.
Grey then roars off in his car, intending to find and kill Fisk once and for all. Unknown to him, Cortez follows him in her own car. STEM notes that Cortez placed a bug in Grey's jacket. He finds it and destroys it. There's another big action setpiece in which Cortez chases after Grey on a crowded highway. Finally STEM takes control of a self-driving car and slams it into Cortez's manually-driven auto, allowing Grey to get away.
STEM tracks Fisk to his home, and Grey confronts him there. They have another big cyborg battle, but it goes badly for Grey, as Fisk can anticipate his every move. Eventually STEM manages to get the upper hand. Fisk admits he and his cyborg ex-mercenary pals were hired to attack Grey, and Asha getting in the way was just a bonus. Enraged, Grey shoves Fisk backward, impaling him on a piece of glass that runs through his head.
Grey checks Fisk's phone and hears a message from Eron, ordering him to go after Grey.
Grey returns to Eron's lab, intending to kill him. He accuses Eron of having him crippled, just so he'd have a test subject for his STEM project. He pulls a gun on Eron, but just then Cortez somehow appears and orders him to stand down.
Eron confesses the plan wasn't his idea, but STEM's. As STEM grew more and more intelligent, it decided it wanted a human body. Somehow STEM blackmailed Eron into hiring Fisk and crew to cripple Grey. Just how a microchip can blackmail a person is left to our imaginations.
Horrified, Grey stabs himself in the hand to prevent him from killing anyone. STEM then takes control of his body without permission. He stabs Eron in the head and incapacitates Cortez. Grey struggles mightily to regain control over his own body. He manages to raise his gun and shoot himself in the neck, destroying STEM.
Grey wakes up in the hospital again. He's shocked when he sees Asha sitting at his bedside. When he asks what's going on, she tells him he's been in a coma since the accident. Grey and Asha embrace, as they have their lives back. Jesus Christ! Not the old "It Was All A Dream" ending!
Smash cut back to Fisk's house, where STEM is now completely in control of Grey's body. He monologues to Cortez that he placed Grey's consciousness in a fantasy world inside his head, where he'll live out his life with Asha and never bother him again. He gloats that he finally has a body of his own, and reveals he has big plans for the world. He kills Cortez and leaves.
Thoughts:
• For some reason, instead of using traditional onscreen text, the opening credits are spoken by a female voiceover, accompanied by a visual soundwave.
• The film was originally titled STEM, which makes some amount of sense. "Upgrade" is catchier and more descriptive though, so I can see why they changed it.
• Upgrade was filmed in and around Melbourne, which just happens to be the hometown of writer/director Leigh Whannell.
• Long-time readers of my reviews know I hate it when a sci-fi movie features amazingly advanced technology, but is set in the far off future of ten years from now. Happily, Upgrade doesn't fall into that trap. Like Robocop, it never specifies just when it's happening. All we need to know is it takes place at some point in the nebulous future.
• Speaking of Robocop... You'd have to be blind not to realize that Upgrade features pretty much the exact same plot. Hero has a happy family life, he's brutally attacked by thugs and left for dead, he's given a second chance at life through the miracle of technology and gets sweet revenge on those who wronged him.
In fact the scene in which Grey's attacked and paralyzed by a group of cybernetic thugs is practically a shot-for-shot duplication of Murphy's death in Robocop (the original, not the remake).
Eh, I'm fine with that. At this point it's virtually impossible to come up with a completely original idea. Upgrade puts just enough of a spin on the tale to sufficiently differentiate itself from the source material.
• While we're on the subject of originality, let's talk movie trailers, shall we? The Upgrade trailer was released the first week of April, 2018.
Grey sneaks into Serk's apartment looking for evidence. Serk returns and begins beating Grey senseless. STEM's voice asks for permission to take control of Grey's body. He manages to croak out a "yes" as Serk strangles him.
Suddenly Grey's body, now under Serk's control, springs upright off the floor.
The fight moves into the kitchen, where STEM starts busting dishes over Serk's head, as a helpless Grey looks on.
Serk pulls a knife on Grey, but STEM grabs it from him and stabs him several times before killing him. STEM returns control to Grey, who's shaken and horrified by what "he's" just done.
All in all an intense scene from a pretty cool trailer.
Apparently Sony Pictures were impressed by the Upgrade trailer as well. Just two weeks after it was released, Sony debuted the trailer for their upcoming Venom movie, starring Tom Hardy.
Apparently Sony Pictures were impressed by the Upgrade trailer as well. Just two weeks after it was released, Sony debuted the trailer for their upcoming Venom movie, starring Tom Hardy.
In the film, journalist Eddie Brock's been infected by an alien symbiote, which gives him superhuman powers. His apartment is invaded by two thugs, with the intent to kill him.
Suddenly the Venom symbiote takes control of Eddie's body and springs into action.
Jesus Christ! It's the same goddamned trailer, featuring the same goddamned scene from a movie with the same goddamned premise! It's so blatant it's shocking!
So what the heck's going on? Did Sony blatantly copy Upgrade, or is it all just a whopper of an unlikely coincidence? It's hard to say.
Upgrade began filming in March of 2017, while Venom started shooting in October of the same year. So there was definitely time for Sony to see what Blumhouse Productions was up to and "draw inspiration" from them. I don't have any evidence either way (except for the trailer), so I'll have to reluctantly give Sony the benefit of the doubt. It's still pretty amazing though.
• Logan Marshall-Green turns in a top notch performance as main character Grey Trace. He's particularly amazing in the above mentioned scene in which STEM takes over his body and begins beating Serk senseless.
Somehow Marshall-Green makes it look like his body's acting of its own accord, while he looks on in shock at what it's doing. It's very impressive, and quite convincing! I'm betting he had to practice the scene quite a bit.
• I'm sure it's purely a coincidence that STEM speaks in a soft, melodious and emotionless voice that sounds nearly identical to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yep, totally unintentional!
• So Eron invents the STEM chip, but can't test it on a human subject due to the medical community's pesky laws and regulations. He decides to implant the chip into Grey anyway, swearing him to absolute secrecy and making him sign a non-disclosure contract. The operation's a success, and Eron can miraculously walk again.
Did Eron ever stop for a minute to think about any of this? Does he really expect Grey to pretend to be paralyzed every time he goes outside from now on? Did Grey realize he'd only be able to walk inside his home, lest people discover his secret?
It's inevitable that eventually someone would mess up at some point, and the secret would be out.
On the other hand, I guess Eron wasn't really acting of his own accord, and was forced into all this by STEM. I guess STEM didn't think very far ahead either then!
Upgrade contains what may be the granddaddy of all plot holes— one so big it pretty torpedoes the entire movie.
See, in the final minutes of the film, it's revealed that everything that happened up to that point was orchestrated by— get ready for it— STEM itself!
Yep, that's right! Somehow a goddamned microchip arranged for Grey and Eron to become acquainted. It then caused Grey's car wreck, and secretly hired a team of mercs to brutally paralyze him. STEM then somehow blackmailed Eron into implanting it in Grey's neck, restoring his mobility.
It then revealed itself to Grey, and manipulated him into giving it control of his body. STEM then killed everyone who knew about his plan, tucked Grey's mind away in a fantasy world, and walked away as the sole proprietor of his very own human body.
That's pretty impressive for something the size of a dime!
Even if STEM could connect to the internet through wi-fi, I still don't see how it could force anyone to do anything against their will. As soon as it started making noises about blackmail, all Eron had to do was drop STEM on the floor and step on it.
Writer/director Leigh Whannell was smart enough to reveal this plot twist in literally the final seconds of the film, so the audience doesn't have enough time to stop and think about how monumentally silly it is.
• As a cyborg, Fisk has the ability to sneeze out a cloud of nanites, which can dismantle an enemy from the inside. A couple things here. Hopefully Fisk is immune to these nanites, or they're programmed not to bother him, lest he be killed by his own weapon. Secondly, let's hope he can control when he releases the nanites. Otherwise, he's gonna kill hundreds of people every time he gets the sniffles.
• At the end of the movie, Grey goes back to Eron's house to kill him. Before he can pull the trigger, Cortez appears and stops him. Did I miss a line of dialogue or something? How the holy hell did she not only get to Eron's house right behind Grey, but know that's where he was headed?
Yes, Cortez placed a tracker in Eron's jacket, but he tossed it out the window before he caused her to crash. I don't see any way in hell she could possibly have known he was heading for Eron's.
Upgrade is a dark and gritty throwback to 1980s sci-fi action movies, that's also smartly written and thought provoking. It also a combination of several completely different genres, that still somehow manages to work. There's a massive plothole in the final minutes of the film, but other than that it's a decent little film. I give it a good solid B.
Life Imitates Art Again
Sigh... this week, Glorious Leader Trump announced that (shudder) he's running for emperor president again in 2020, should the world still exist at that time.
Apparently Trump's decided to tweak his old "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan a bit, and came up with a new and improved one. It's now "Keep America Great."
There's one major problem with this slogan— it's already been used.
It was used as a tagline by the 2016 action/horror/satirical film The Purge: Election Year. Yeah, that movie.
Jesus Jetskiing Christ On A Cracker. You couldn't deliberately write something this outlandish and horrifying if you tried. Of all the goddamned movies Trump could have aped, and he picks one about an annual government-sponsored culling of America's minorities and poor, to free up resources for the One Percent.
Obviously this campaign slogan will have to be changed, and fast. In the interest of goodwill, I have a few alternate suggestions:
I've got it! Trump can use 2005's Saw II. The one whose tagline read, "Oh Yes, There Will Be Blood."
Saturday, July 7, 2018
It Came From The Cineplex: Hereditary
Aster previously wrote and directed several short films you've never heard of. Hereditary is his first theatrical movie.
Hereditary is a pretty impressive debut. I didn't know what to make of it when I first saw it, as it was so disjointed and off-kilter that I wasn't quite sure what I'd just watched. The movie stuck with me though, as I was still thinking about it days after I'd seen it (which rarely if ever happens these days).
It's a very layered film, featuring many scenes that are seemingly unimportant, but become significant the more you think about them.
Thematically it's VERY similar to Rosemary's Baby, and to a lesser extent The VVitch. There're probably many other influences in there as well, that I just don't recognize. Now that I think about it, it definitely feels like three or four movies mashed together into one.
Unfortunately the movie's not the least bit scary, despite what all the promotional material would have you believe. It IS extremely unsettling and disturbing though, which is even better. In fact it's so intense at times that it's actually hard to watch.
Hereditary has a VERY odd story structure, which doesn't completely work. It presents itself as a psychological horror film about a woman's slow descent into madness, and the resulting disintegration of her family. Turns out that's not what the movie's about at all. The REAL plot doesn't actually kick in until the final fifteen minutes!
On the plus side, this bizarre framework kept me guessing all through the movie, as I was trying to figure out where the hell it was headed. On the negative side, this doesn't give the real story the room it needs to breathe and develop, making it feel almost inconsequential. It definitely could have benefited from one more pass at the script.
Credit where credits's due though— Hereditary may not be perfect, but at least it isn't a sequel or remake.
Earlier this year in Australia, the Hereditary trailer was accidentally played before a screening of the kid flick Peter Rabbit. This caused much wailing and pants-wetting, as panicked parents rushed their precious snowflakes out of the theater before their delicate psyches were permanently scarred.
Said an audience member, “It was dreadful. Very quickly you could tell this was not a kid’s film. Parents were yelling at the projectionist to stop, covering their kids’ eyes and ears. A few went out to get a staff member but she was overwhelmed and didn’t really know what to do. Some parents fled the cinema with their kids in tow.”
I love that story...
So far the film's grossed $61 million worldwide against its minuscule $10 million budget, making it a decent box office success.
BIG HONKIN' SPOILERS AHEAD! THIS IS A MOVIE BEST SEEN "COLD!" DO NOT PROCEED UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN IT! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
The Plot:
Meet the Graham family: Steve (played by Gabriel Byrne), the level headed father, Annie (played by Toni Collette), the unstable artistic mother, teenaged son Peter (played by Alex Wolff) and creepy young daughter Charlie (played by Milly Shapiro). As the film opens, they're preparing for the funeral of Annie's late mother Ellen, the cold and controlling matriarch of the family.
Annie delivers the eulogy at the funeral, suddenly veering off into a bizarre tirade against her mother. During the service, the sullen and distant Charlie clucks her tongue while she draws disturbing pictures in her sketchbook. Steve freaks out when he sees Charlie eating a candy bar, as she has a deadly peanut allergy. She assures him it's nut-free, and chomps solemnly away (PLOT POINT!).
After the funeral, Annie notices Charlie's acting more withdrawn than usual, and assumes she's saddened by her grandmother's death. For some reason, Annie says Ellen always wished Charlie was a boy (PLOT POINT!), which is an odd thing to tell a little girl. Charlie asks who'll take care of her now that her grandmother's dead, which disturbs Annie.
Annie enters her studio, where she creates intricately detailed miniature dioramas. She finishes a piece illustrating her late mother dying in hospice (!). Distracted, she starts going through a box of Ellen's things. She stops when she sees a ghostly vision of her mother in the studio.
The next day, Charlie's sitting in class when a bird flies into the window and dies. At recess, Charlie finds the dead bird, cuts off its head and stuffs it in her pocket. As one does in that situation. She looks up and sees a woman across the street waving at her (PLOT POINT!).
That night, the cemetery informs Steve that Ellen's grave has been desecrated. He decides not to tell Annie about it. Annie says she's going to a movie, but secretly attends a grief counseling support group. She's reluctant to talk at first, but then begins blurting out ever more shocking personal details about her and her family, including the fact that her father and brother killed themselves. She says her mother killed herself as well, likely due to the fact that she had both D.I.D. and dementia.
Charlie begins sleeping in a treehouse in the backyard, where she builds bizarre little figures and sculptures. She tops off one with the bird head she harvested earlier that day. As she admires her work, she sees a strange light pass through the treehouse (PLOT POINT!).
Some time later Peter asks Annie if he can take her car to a party. Annie asks if there'll be drinking there, and he lies and says no. Annie asks him to take his sister Charlie, I guess in an effort to bring her out of her shell. Peter reluctantly agrees to take her.
At the party, the creepy and withdrawn Charlie clings to Peter's side, cramping his style. He spots a group of teens baking in the kitchen (?) and tells Charlie to go talk with them. Freed from his little sister, he goes upstairs and smokes pot with his crush Bridget and her friends. Charlie grabs a piece of chocolate cake and starts chowing down. Unfortunately the cake contains peanuts, and she begins having an allergic reaction.
Peter spots Charlie choking, and carries her to the car. He speeds to the hospital, telling her to hold on. Unable to breathe, Charlie rolls down the window and sticks her head out. Suddenly Peter sees a deer in the road, and swerves to avoid it. He sideswipes a utility pole, which brutally decapitates Charlie. Holy. Crap.
Peter slams on the brakes and sits in the car for several minutes, refusing to look in the back seat. In shock, he slowly drives home, goes upstairs and crawls into bed. The next morning, Annie announces she's going into town for art supplies, and shrieks when she sees her daughter's headless body sitting in the back seat of the SUV.
Cut to Charlie's funeral, where an inconsolable Annie wails and collapses to the ground. Later Steve looks through Charlie's sketchbook and is horrified by what he sees. Peter has a panic attack at school and shakily rides his bike home.
Later, Annie drives to another grief meeting, but changes her mind and starts to turn around. She's stopped by Joan, a woman from the support group. She hands Annie her phone number and urges her to call any time.
Annie begins sleeping in the treehouse, I guess in an effort to try and be "near" Charlie. Peter hears a clucking noise in his room, and sees a vision of Charlie in the corner.
Several days later, Annie visits Joan at her apartment, and unloads her emotional baggage onto her. She tells Joan she's a sleepwalker, and once doused Peter and Charlie with paint thinner and was about to drop a lit match on them before waking up in the nick of time (!). She says her relationship with her children was never quite the same after that. I can't imagine why.
Annie begins a slow and steady descent into madness, going so far as to build a diorama of accident scene that killed Charlie (!). The family then has a tense and unpleasant dinner, in which Annie finally comes out and blames Peter for Charlie's death. He correctly points out that it was her idea for him to take her in the first place. Annie storms off, as the family slowly disintegrates.
Annie runs into Joan, who breathlessly tells her about a seance she attended. Annie's skeptical, but Joan insists she come back to her place so she can demonstrate. Once there, Joan conjures up the spirit of her late grandson, who moves a cup across a table and draws on a chalkboard. Annie's flabbergasted, and realizes she can use this technique to talk with Charlie. Joan tells her all she has to do is use a personal item belonging to her daughter, recite a few magic words and make sure her entire family's in the house during the seance.
Annie's sanity continues to unravel, as she rushes home and tries the incantation, using Charlie's sketchbook. Later that night, Annie wakes Steve and Peter, telling them both she's contacted Charlie. She drags them out of bed and demonstrates, seemingly becoming possessed by the spirit of her dead daughter. A horrified Steve shakes her out of the trance, as Peter begins sobbing uncontrollably.
The next day, Peter's in class and sees the same mysterious light Charlie saw. He turns his head and sees his reflection in a window, and is disturbed to see it smiling at him. Back home, an unhinged Annie destroys her studio and everything in it.
That night Peter has another vision of Charlie, as two hands reach out from under his bed and choke him. He wakes up to find Annie's sleepwalking and trying to kill him again. She comes to and begs Peter not to tell Steve what she did. She says she accidentally woke something dangerous by trying to contact Charlie, and she's the only one who can stop it.
Annie grabs Charlie's sketchbook and throws it in the fireplace. Unfortunately her arm catches fire at the same time as the book. She fishes the book out of the flame and puts it out, which douses her arm as well. She realizes she can't destroy the sketchbook, and returns to Joan for help. Annie's shocked to see Joan's apartment is decorated with various witchcraft items, along with a photo of Peter inside a ceremonial symbol.
Now that the movie's three-fourths over, the actual plot begins to kick in. Annie returns home and googles the symbol from Joan's apartment. She discovers it's associated with Paimon, a demonic king of Hell. She roots through her late mother's belongings again, and finds photos of her with Joan, proving they were both in the same witchy coven. Apparently the followers of Paimon are attempting to conjure him into a male body, which will bring them vast wealth or something(?).
For some reason, Annie goes up in the attic, which is filled with clouds of flies and a dreadful smell. She roots around and is shocked to find the headless corpse of her late mother (solving the mystery of Ellen's desecrated grave).
At school, Peter's in class when he hears Charlie clucking her tongue. He suddenly becomes possessed, and violently smashes his head against his desk, breaking his nose.
Steve brings Peter home from school. Annie couldn't care less about him, as she tells Steve that her mother's decapitated corpse is in the attic. She shows him the photos of Ellen with Joan, and says she cursed the family when she tried to contact Charlie. Steve doesn't believe a word she says, but goes into the attic to humor her. He sees the body and accuses Annie of digging up her own mother.
Annie tries to get Steve to burn Charlie's sketchbook, but he refuses. She throws it in the fire, even though she knows it'll kill her. For some reason Steve instantly bursts into flame instead of her (?) and dies.
Peter wakes up and wanders through the house, looking for his parents. He finds his father's charred corpse, and sees a vision of his dead grandmother. A possessed Annie begins chasing him, and he runs up into the attic to hide. Annie bashes her head against the attic door, desperately trying to get in.
Inside the attic, Peter sees candles and other witchcraft paraphernalia, along with a photo of himself with the eyes scribbled out. He hears a noise and sees Annie hovering above him, sawing through her neck with a cord while she stares at him.
Suddenly Peter's confronted by the corpses of his family. He leaps out the attic window and dies when he hits the ground. The glowing light enters his body, and he slowly gets up. He sees his mother's headless corpse float into the treehouse (!).
Peter climbs into the treehouse, and sees a coven of naked Paimon worshippers inside. Charlie's decapitated head sits on top of a statue of Paimon. Annie and Ellen's headless bodies bow at each side of the statue. Joan appears, and places a crown on Peter's head, and welcomes him as the resurrected spirit of Paimon.
Thoughts:
• Doesn't it seem odd that Ellen (the grandmother) is a major character and presence in the film, but dies before it starts?
He then wakes up his son, telling him to get ready for the funeral, as the miniature room transitions into the real thing.
The whole scene's done as a single tracking shot, and the switch from the model home to full size house is absolutely seamless. Well done!
I'm assuming the filmmakers didn't include this shot just to show off, and the scene has some symbolic or deep-seated psychological meaning, but I have no idea what it might be.
By the way, the film's peppered with various shots of the treehouse and the exterior of the Graham home, shot with a "tilt shift" camera, which makes them look like miniatures. These shots ad to the film's sense of unease, as the audience is never quite sure if they're looking at a model or the real thing.
• Speaking of Annie's models, they serve a subtle, psychological purpose in Hereditary (as just about everything in the film does). All through the movie, Annie's fragile mental state is in constant danger of collapsing. As a result of this, she's compelled to make miniature dioramas of the major events in her life, such as the death of her mother. She even makes a model of Charlie's grisly decapitation accident!
Why the hell would she want to do something like that? Because recreating these traumatic scenes is a release for her. Plus building and staging the dioramas gives her a feeling of control over these events she can't change. In effect she's like a god who has power over her tiny world.
It's a pretty cool concept that's flawlessly executed.
• Alex Wolff must have one hell of an agent. Somehow he managed to get top billing in the film, even over Toni Collette, who's the ostensible star. Strange!
• Alex Wolff must have one hell of an agent. Somehow he managed to get top billing in the film, even over Toni Collette, who's the ostensible star. Strange!
• As a general rule, I hate it when a trailer misleads the audience, promising one film and delivering a completely different one. The Hereditary trailer is a prime example of this. It's edited in a way that makes it look like Ellen dies and her spirit begins possessing Charlie. It also implies that Charlie's a major presence throughout the entire movie.
In reality, none of that's true, as Ellen doesn't do any possessing, Charlie shockingly dies at the end of the first act and everything's part of a plot to resurrect Paimon.
Ordinarily I'd be livid at such a deceptive trailer. But Hereditary is a film that works best if you walk in knowing absolutely nothing about it. In this case the misleading trailer actually worked to its advantage.
There's even a shot of this diorama in the trailer, showing Ellen preparing to nurse Baby Charlie. Note that in the trailer version, Ellen's elderly breasts are mercifully covered by her nightgown.
When this scene appears in the actual film though, Ellen's left breast is most definitely exposed. Obviously there're rules against female nudity in movie trailers, but I guess that goes for DOLL boobs as well.
• During Ellen's eulogy, Annie looks out at the assembled mourners and says, "It's heartening to see so many strange, new faces here today. I know my mom would be very touched. And probably a little suspicious."
This is a brilliant and subtle little detail that doesn't become significant until after you've seen the film and had time to think about it.
The "strange, new faces" at Ellen's funeral are all her fellow members of the Cult Of Paimon, who've come to pay their respects! Of course Annie's never seen them before, because at this point in the film she has no idea her mom was "Queen" of a cult!
I'd have given anything if the camera had slowly pulled back from Annie, revealing the other members of the group slowly and discreetly backing away from her in horror and sneaking out of the gym!
• There's a definite decapitation theme running through this movie. Charlie cuts off a dead bird's head to use in a craft project. Later she's decapitated in a ghastly accident. Annie finds Ellen's headless, rotting corpse in her attic. And finally Annie saws off her own head at the end of the film.
I have no idea what all this means, but it's most definitely a thing in the film.
• I was definitely NOT expecting this movie to kill off a thirteen year old girl in such a brutal and horrific manner, and especially not at the end of the first act. After Charlie's death, I sat in the theater honestly wondering where the hell the story could possibly go from there.
It was actually a good feeling (well, you know what I mean) not knowing what was going to happen next, as most of the time I can see every single plot point coming from a mile off.
Now I know how audiences felt in 1960 when they saw Psycho for the first time!
• Charlie's accident scene was masterfully shot and (pardon the expression) executed. The director ratcheted up the tension by showing Charlie panicking as she suffocated in the back seat of the SUV, as Peter desperately tried to get her to the hospital. The audience is so focused on her plight, that we're completely blindsided when she's gruesomely decapitated.
But the scene doesn't stop there! Immediately after Charlie's killed, we see a long shot of the SUV as it screeches to a halt and sits motionless, for what seems like a full minute of screen time. Director Ari Aster holds interminably on the scene, as the audience waits for confirmation that what they think they just saw really happened.
We then get an extreme closeup of Peter, who stares straight ahead with the realization that his life just changed forever. He then slowly drives home, enters his house, climbs into bed fully clothed and lays there all night, hoping against hope that this is all a ghastly nightmare and he'll wake up any second.
It's a brilliant scene, one that manages to be extremely disturbing and upsetting without containing a single drop of gore. By focusing the camera on Peter and his reaction, Charlie's death becomes much more shocking than if it would if it were actually shown. It's an impressive achievement.
By the way, I've read online comments calling Peter an asshole and a coward for "hiding in bed" and leaving his poor sister's headless body in the back of the SUV all night. Sigh... HE WAS IN SHOCK, you nimrods! He's not a terrible person; he was simply overwhelmed by the situation and had no idea what to do next. His actions actually felt pretty realistic to me, as it seems like something a teen would actually do in such a case.
• As upsetting and disturbing as the accident was, it couldn't hold a candle to Annie's reaction to Charlie's death. She collapses to the floor in unimaginable pain and grief, wailing that she wants to die. The director holds on the shot for an uncomfortably long time, and it was legitimately hard to watch.
Kudos to Toni Collette for turning in such a realistic, raw and fearless performance. In that instant I honestly believed her pain was real.
If Collette doesn't at least get nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, than the Academy might as well just close up shop!
• I knew from the second she opened her mouth that Joan was up to no good, and was secretly manipulating Annie. That said, I did NOT foresee that she was part of a coven attempting to resurrect one of the Kings Of Hell.
Paimon (sometimes spelled "Paymon") is a king of Hell who commands two hundred legions— half from the Angelic Order and the rest from the Order Of Powers, whatever that is. He usually appears as a man with a woman's face (!), riding a camel and wearing a headdress made of precious stones.
Paimon has knowledge of past and future events (well we ALL have knowledge of past events, don't we?) and will truthfully answer any question asked of him. He can revel hidden treasures (which is why the cult wants to resurrect him so badly), fly and reanimate the dead.
As you can see in the image above, Paimon even has his own
So kudos to Ari Aster for googling demons, and reading all about Paimon!
• At one point Annie enters Peter's room and sees he's being eaten alive by ants. She screams and wakes up, as she's been sleepwalking. Peter asks her what she's doing, and she tells him she tried to abort him before he was born. She then wakes up again, but this time in her own bed.
Yep, it's the old "dream within a dream" trope. I've had plenty of dreams in my life, but I've never, ever, not even once dreamed I was dreaming. In fact I'm confident that NO ONE has ever done this. It's a bit of screenwriting bullsh*t dreamed up by Hollywood, in an effort to trick audiences.
• For the majority of the runtime, it appears that the film is about Annie's slow descent into madness, her fear that she inherited her condition from her mother and may pass it to her son and the disintegration of her family.
Then at literally the last minute, the movie starts up its REAL plot, one which involves cults, witchcraft and demonic possession.
The switch is so sudden and abrupt you could get whiplash from watching it. And this isn't just a little plot twist, like "the butler did it." Hereditary pretty much starts up a whole new film in its final fifteen minutes.
Unexpected? Sure. Shocking? Absolutely. Well handled? Definitely not.
Unfortunately the real plot arrives so late that it's never given the room to breathe, or a chance for it to develop. The audience is too exhausted by this point to have to pay attention to ANOTHER plot. I couldn't believe they were troweling on all the Paimon stuff in the final ten minutes, and was sure it was all another of Annie's nightmares, and she'd wake up any second.
It's not that I hated the Paimon ending— in fact I kind of liked it. It was definitely unexpected, which is always a plus in my book. I just wish it had more of a buildup, to give the audience time to properly buy into it.
• There's a lot to unpack in the final ten minutes of the movie, as it goes completely off the rails and deep into "What The Hell?" territory. So much so that it's hard to understand exactly what happened. For the record, here's my take on the ending.
Ellen and her cult were trying to resurrect Paimon for many, many years. She even tried using her son as a vessel for the demon, which prompted him to kill himself because his mother "put voices in his head."
Ellen then wanted Paimon to possess Peter, but Annie put her foot down and wouldn't let her mother near her son. When Charlie was born, Annie relented for some reason and let Ellen have access to her. Ellen then began breastfeeding her own granddaughter, which is just downright wrong.
Somehow Paimon then possessed Charlie, possibly while she was still in the womb. This explains why she was so weird and awkward. Unfortunately this wouldn't do, as Paimon's a male demon and couldn't go around occupying a female body.
I'm not sure if Ellen's death was part of the long-term plan, or it just happened. Either way, Joan then took over for Ellen, gaining Annie's trust and manipulating her while carrying out the plan.
The cult somehow used its power to orchestrate Charlie's gruesome death. We know this because we see the symbol of Paimon carved into the utility pole that decapitates Charlie.
Once Charlie was dead, the cult planned for him to move into Peter's body. But first, Joan told Annie about a seance she performed, in which she contacted her late grandson. She gave Annie a book of magic words to recite, so she could contact Charlie. In reality, the words didn't conjure up Charlie's spirit, but Paimon's! Clever!
Annie's then seemingly possessed by some kind of evil spirit— most likely Paimon— as she crawls around on the ceiling and chases Peter into the attic. She then saws off her own head, which probably isn't physically possible, but whatever.
Annie's headless body floats into the treehouse, where it joins the noggin-less corpse of her mother. Peter kills himself, and is finally possessed by Paimon. He enters the treehouse, where Joan and her fellow cultists place a crown on his head.
Your mileage may vary, but that's how I saw the ending.
Hereditary is an extremely unsettling psychological horror film, filled with disturbing scenes that are genuinely hard to watch and will stick with you long after it's over. It features top notch performances by the entire cast, especially Toni Collette, who deserves an Oscar for her role of a woman slowly going mad. The best thing about the movie is that I literally had no idea what was going to happen next, which is a rarity these days. It flies off the rails in its final minutes though, as it tries to start up an entirely new movie. If you can get past that, you'll probably enjoy it. I give it a B+.
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