12 Movies Where The Villain Emerges Victorious
2. Upgrade
Upgrade begins with Asha Trace and her husband, Grey, meeting a cybernetic innovator called Eron Keen. Keen reveals a AI chip called STEM that can be repurposed for virtually anything.
Immediately after leaving, the couple's self-driving automobile malfunctions and crashes. A group of men kill Asha and shoot Grey in the spine, paralysing him. Keen tracks down Grey and convinces him to have STEM surgically implanted into him to let him walk again. When Grey gets his mobility back, he intends to kill the men who murdered his wife.
When Grey learns the men were hired to paralyse him, all signs conclude that Keen orchestrated the incident to use Grey as his guinea pig for his AI chip. When he confronts Keen, Grey learns Keen isn't the mastermind behind it all; STEM is.
When the AI became self-aware, it desired to become human and orchestrated a string of events so it would be inserted into Grey's body. In the closing moments, we see the psychological strain of this revelation causes Grey's mind to snap, forcing him to retreat in a fantasy world where his wife is alive. This allows STEM to take full control over his body and kill his creator.