10 Recent Box Office Duds Destined To Become Cult Classics
6. Upgrade
Logan Marshall-Green's main character may bear the Generic Action Hero #112 name of Grey Trace, but very little about Leigh Whannell's Upgrade is quite so formulaic. Clearly inspired by early Cameron, Carpenter and Cronenberg, on paper Upgrade reads like the b*stard child of the recent RoboCop remake and Venom, but is vastly superior to both of those movies on almost every level.
The cyperpunk-flavored actioner follows a quadriplegic mechanic fitted with an experimental spinal implant that allows him to regain the use of his limbs. Which is underselling it somewhat, as the implant assumes control of his body, allowing Trace to go on a revenge-fueled rampage to track down the people responsible for murdering his wife and leaving him paralyzed.
That may sound like a predictable B-movie plot, but Upgrade has a wicked streak of black humor and finds time for plenty of social and technological satire to go along with the lashings of ultra-violence. Despite coming from the Blumhouse hit factory, Upgrade couldn't quite manage to break out like so many of the studio's other offerings and earned just $16.6m at the box office, but the high-concept genre movie will only get more popular among aficionados as the years go by.