Dana Schwartz

The real magic of the movie comes in its echoes of the first — namely, Black’s performance as the Goosebumps mastermind.

Excellent performers are wasted, especially the criminally underutilized Mandy Patinkin and Annette Bening, both of whom appear in just bit parts. With far too much confidence but nothing to say, Life Itself lives up to the college-freshman affectedness of its own title.

Where the Purge movies could have been about the slow — and then terrifyingly rapid — dismissal of morality and social norms, like "High-Rise," it chooses instead to skate through those haunted house scares and clunky symbolism.

As a movie, it’s the cinematic equivalent of paint-by-numbers: competent, attractive even, but take a single step closer and the lines peek through. There’s no need to pay money to go see Upgrade: If you select it on a plane and sleep through 60% of it, you’ve seen it in its entirety.