With founders Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, masterminds of such low-budget horror as “Decision,” “Spring,” and “The Limitless,” now entrenched within the Marvel machine, their Rustic Movies is asking within the reserves. “Descendent” author/director Peter Cilella has been concerned with a number of Rustic productions as an actor, going all the way in which again to “Decision” in 2012. Now, he’s the newest member of the Los Angeles-based manufacturing firm’s roster — he’s preceded by Michael Felker, whose “Issues Will Be Totally different” debuted underneath the Rustic banner final 12 months — to get his flip within the huge chair, so to talk.
On the movie’s SXSW premiere, Cilella described his function directorial debut as being about “melancholy, nervousness, and aliens.” And the movie’s priorities do unfold in that order. There’s additionally some soul-searching about what it means to be a person in modern America, a subject that’s too typically hijacked by right-wing misogynists however is given an earnest and even-handed therapy right here. And if you’re invested in, or a minimum of open to, exploring this theme, “Descendent” is participating and considerate all through. However extraterrestrial fans ought to know that this film is about 90 p.c dad stuff, and solely 10 p.c aliens.
Our protagonist, Sean Bruner (Ross Marquand), is a safety guard working at a non-public college in Los Angeles who’s fraying underneath the pressures of impending fatherhood. Together with the standard difficulties — mattress relaxation, birthing courses, the excessive prices of healthcare and child formulation — anticipating his first baby is bringing quite a lot of baggage with Sean’s personal father to the floor. Sean’s dad died by suicide when he was seven, which is tragic. However there are extra and weirder undercurrents to the state of affairs, as we uncover over the course of the movie.
Because it seems, Sean’s father was labeled a crackpot as a result of he claimed to have encountered a UFO within the excessive desert of inland California, setting the stage for his eventual dying. And Sean’s abandonment points go into overdrive when he has his personal terrifying and inexplicable encounter with a “non-human biologic,” because the U.S. authorities is now calling them. He wakes up within the hospital two days later, with gaps in his reminiscence and a newfound expertise for drawing. His physician calls it “sudden savant syndrome,” and tells him it’ll “lead him again.” On this case, that finally ends up being literal.
Sean fears shedding his sanity, shedding his household, and probably shedding his life if he’s too vocal about what occurred to him. And provided that he’s a conventional household man who desires to offer for his spouse Andrea (Sarah Bolger) and their baby, vulnerability has by no means been his forte. So he suffers quietly, scribbling windmills on his notepad and borrowing a gun from his finest good friend “for cover.” His childhood canine — or is it? — immediately reappears, however he doesn’t query it till previous and current collapse in on one another so fully that even this fragmented man has to note.
Viewers who’re nicely versed in alien lore will acknowledge Sean’s signs, all of that are generally reported by abductees. A variety of them additionally point out a psychotic break, introducing a component of ambiguity that’s true to life and in addition sensible for an impartial filmmaker with out an enormous funds for alien results. As a substitute, Marquand, finest identified for his roles on “The Strolling Lifeless” and in varied Marvel properties, carries the movie on his burly again. And we lose the plot with him, constructing to a finale that’s equal components irritating and haunting.
“Descendent” implies that what Sean is experiencing is actual, returning a number of instances to the identical few horrific seconds of Sean being trapped in a netlike membrane and having a needle inserted into his mind a lá 1993’s “Hearth within the Sky.” That movie can also be largely a drama, but it surely saves its heart-stopping alien sequence for the top. “Descendent” regularly dials up the hallucinatory components, the good of those are the reptilian eyes that Sean imagines he sees first on strangers after which these closest to him. Cilella enhances them with judiciously utilized VFX and evocative sound results, notably Andrea crying and screaming in ache.
As typically occurs with tales about males and their pregnant wives, there’s a complete parallel horror film on the market someplace that facilities on Andrea and her rising panic that she will be able to not belief the person on whom she’s pressured to rely. “Descendent” is sympathetic towards Andrea, however she and the movie’s different feminine characters are largely there for Sean — and, by extension, the viewers — to challenge their emotions about masculinity onto them. And Cilella by no means fairly will get round to establishing a powerful thesis tying the movie’s exploration of masculine identification to the idea of alien abduction, as an alternative pivoting into a well-recognized intergenerational trauma theme.
“They” undoubtedly use Sean’s insecurities to mess together with his head, a incontrovertible fact that’s said in a cryptic sequence that’s very very similar to one thing out of a Benson and Moorhead film. A variety of “Descendent” is paying homage to Benson and Moorhead’s work, really, which is each a praise — they made a number of the most fascinating style movies of the 2010s — and a problem for the corporate to push its inventive limits a little bit additional subsequent time. Whereas making a lo-fi sci-fi/drama hybrid with an ambiguous ending is presumably not required to get a Rustic Movies launch, “Descendent” doesn’t break this mould.
Grade: B-
“Descendent” world premiered at SXSW 2025. It’s set for North American distribution later in 2025 from RLJE Movies.
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