Descendent – Film Review

Peter Cilella’s Descendent is not your typical science fiction thriller. While the premise of mysterious lights in the sky and extraterrestrial visions may sound like familiar genre territory, the film distinguishes itself by anchoring its high-concept mystery in the deeply human struggles of its protagonist. Written and directed by Cilella, Descendent feels intimate, unsettling, and emotionally layered.

The film follows Sean Bruner (Ross Marquand), a school security guard who is already wrestling with unhealed trauma from his past while preparing for the life-altering responsibility of fatherhood with his wife Andrea (Sarah Bolger). When a beam of light descends from the sky one night during his shift, Sean is thrust into a bizarre and terrifying experience. Waking up in a hospital with an inexplicable compulsion to draw haunting images of extraterrestrials and barren desert landscapes, he finds his grip on reality increasingly fragile. The question lingers: is Sean undergoing a psychic transformation linked to something otherworldly, or is his troubled mind finally fracturing under the weight of unresolved pain?

At the heart of Descendent is Ross Marquand, best known for his work on The Walking Dead and his uncanny voice impersonations. Here, Marquand delivers what may be the most raw and vulnerable performance of his career. His portrayal of Sean is filled with jagged edges—a man burdened by past wounds yet desperately striving to be a better husband and soon-to-be father. When Sean begins producing his eerie, otherworldly sketches, Marquand plays the obsession with a mix of fear, awe, and self-loathing. He’s terrified of what he’s becoming but equally transfixed by it, as though some deeper truth is clawing its way out of him.

Sarah Bolger’s Andrea serves as the emotional anchor of the film, balancing Sean’s unraveling with grounded strength. Bolger, who has consistently brought nuance to roles in The Tudors and Emelie, gives Andrea a quiet resilience. Her performance avoids the cliché of the “long-suffering spouse” and instead portrays a woman torn between compassion and self-preservation. The chemistry between Bolger and Marquand is crucial—their dynamic lends authenticity to the emotional stakes, making the sci-fi elements feel secondary to the story of a marriage under siege by forces beyond comprehension.

Cilella’s direction is slow-burning and deliberate. He crafts an atmosphere where dread doesn’t come from jump scares or flashy effects, but from silence, suggestion, and uncertainty. The recurring motif of Sean’s drawings is especially effective. Each sketch feels like a window into something vast and incomprehensible, a creeping reminder that the universe is far stranger and more menacing than we might imagine.

The cinematography leans heavily into naturalistic lighting, contrasting the sterile fluorescent glow of the school corridors with the eerie luminescence of the beam in the sky. Later sequences evoke a sense of infinite emptiness, amplifying the psychological disorientation at play. The visual language suggests that Sean is caught between two worlds—the domestic space of impending parenthood and the uncharted territory of cosmic intrusion.

The sound design also deserves praise. The hum of electrical interference, the scratch of a pencil on paper, and distorted echoes of voices subtly heighten tension without overwhelming the viewer. This quiet but insistent auditory layering mirrors Sean’s descent, drawing us into his headspace without spelling everything out.

What elevates Descendent beyond a simple sci-fi thriller is its exploration of trauma and parenthood against the backdrop of cosmic horror. Sean’s struggle is not just about understanding what happened during his abduction-like experience, but about confronting his own damaged psyche. The film suggests that the real horror lies not in alien contact but in what it exposes—unresolved grief, self-doubt, and the fear of failing as a father.

Andrea’s pregnancy grounds the narrative in a tangible urgency. The juxtaposition of new life with Sean’s spiraling mental state raises poignant questions: what kind of father can a man be when he can’t trust his own mind? How do you prepare to bring a child into a world that feels increasingly alien and hostile? The extraterrestrial mystery becomes a metaphor for the anxieties of parenthood—an unknown future filled with awe, terror, and inevitability.

Cilella also flirts with cosmic indifference. The extraterrestrial presence—or perhaps absence—is less an antagonist and more a reminder of humanity’s smallness. Whether Sean has been chosen, cursed, or simply caught in a random event is never made entirely clear. That ambiguity fuels the film’s lingering unease, reinforcing the notion that the universe operates on a scale beyond human comprehension or control.

While the slow-burning pacing will not work for everyone, it is one of the film’s strengths. Cilella avoids cheap thrills, instead allowing tension to accumulate organically. Each scene builds incrementally, layering psychological unraveling with cosmic suggestion. The effect is mesmerizing, though occasionally the film risks dragging—particularly in its second act, where repetition of Sean’s compulsions threatens to dull the momentum.

The climax is more emotional than explosive, staying true to the film’s intimate scope. Rather than a grand spectacle of alien encounters, the ending focuses on Sean’s confrontation with himself and his place in the vastness of existence. This restraint will undoubtedly divide audiences, with some craving more definitive answers. But for those attuned to its wavelength, the ambiguity is precisely what makes the film linger—it resists neat conclusions, much like the mysteries of trauma and the cosmos themselves.

Descendent is unlikely to be a mainstream hit. Its minimalism, ambiguity, and emotional heaviness place it closer to films like Under the Skin or The Vast of Night than to action-oriented alien thrillers. But for fans of cerebral, character-driven science fiction, it’s a striking addition to the genre. The collaboration of Cilella with Benson and Moorhead has yielded a film that feels both personal and expansive, intimate in its human focus yet cosmic in its implications.

Though not flawless—its pacing may frustrate, and its refusal to clarify the nature of Sean’s experiences may alienate viewers seeking closure—Descendent succeeds in crafting a haunting portrait of a man caught between trauma, responsibility, and the infinite unknown. With standout performances from Ross Marquand and Sarah Bolger, and a director unafraid to embrace ambiguity, the film leaves a lasting impression long after the credits roll.

Descendent is a quietly devastating sci-fi thriller that merges human fragility with cosmic terror. It’s less about aliens than about what we see in ourselves when confronted with the unknown, and it’s this intersection of the intimate and the infinite that makes the film so compelling.