With the founders Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, masterminds of such low budget horror as “resolution”, “spring” and “The Endless”, which are now rooted in the Marvel machine, call their rustic films in the reserve. “Descendant“Writer director Peter Cilella has been involved in several rustic productions as an actor, goes all the way back to” Resolution “in 2012. Now he is the latest member of the rustic base-based production company’s list-he preceded by Michael Felker, whose “things will be different” debuted during the rustic track last year-to have its turn in the great chairman.
At filmS SXSW Premiere, Cilella described her functional registration debut as about “depression, anxiety and foreigners.” And the film’s priorities develop in that order. There are also some self -seekers about what it means to be a man in contemporary America, a topic that is too often hijacked by right -wing misogueists but receives a serious and even treatment here. And if you are invested in, or at least open to, explore this theme, “descendent” is engaging and thought provoking all the time. But extraterrestrial enthusiasts should know that this movie is about 90% dad things and only 10% foreigners.
Our protagonist, Sean Bruner (Ross Marquand), is a security guard who works at a private school in Los Angeles that strikes under the pressure from imminent paternity. Along with the usual difficulties – bed support, birth classes, the high costs of health care and baby formula – to predict that his first child brings a lot of luggage with Sean’s own father to the surface. Sean’s father died of suicide when he was seven, which is tragic. But there are more and long undercurrents in the situation, which we discover during the film.
As it turns out, Sean’s father was described as a crackpot because he claimed to have encountered a UFO in the high desert in Inland California and set the stage for his possible death. And Sean’s abandonment issues go into exaggeration when he has his own scary and inexplicable meeting with a “non-human biological”, as the US government now calls them. He wakes up at the hospital two days later, with gaps in his memory and a newfound talent for drawing. His doctor calls it “sudden Savant syndrome” and tells him it will “lead him back.” In this case it is literal.
Sean fears to lose his reason, losing his family and potentially losing his life if he is too singing about what happened to him. And given that he is a traditional family man who wants to support his wife Andrea (Sarah Bolger) and their children, vulnerability has never been Hans Forte. So he suffers quietly, scribbles windmills on his notepad and borrows a gun from his best friend “for protection.” His childhood dog – Or is it? – Suddenly, he does not question it until before and current collapse on each other so completely that this fragmented one must also notice.
Viewers who are well -rewritten in foreign Lore will recognize Sean’s symptoms, all of which are usually reported by abduction. Many of them also indicate a psychotic break that introduces an element of ambiguity that is true in life and also smart for an independent filmmaker without a huge budget for foreign effects. Instead, Marquand, best known for his roles on “The Walking Dead” and in various Marvel properties, wears the film on his clever back. And we lose the action with him and build to a finale that is equal parts that are frustrating and haunting.
“Descendent” means that what Sean experiences is real, returns several times to the same few terrible seconds by Sean captured in a network -like membrane and has a needle inserted into his brain a Lá 1993’s “Fire in the sky.” That movie is also mostly a drama, but it saves its heart -stopping foreign sequence for the end. “Descendent” gradually calls the hallucinating elements, the coolest of these are the reptilian eyes that Sean imagines that he first looks at strangers and then the closest him. Cilella improves them with sensibly applied VFX and atmospheric sound effects, especially Andrea cries and screaming pain.
Who sometimes happens to stories about men and their pregnant wives, there are a whole parallel horror movie out there somewhere that centers on Andrea and her growing panic that she can no longer trust the man she is forced to depend on. “Descendent” is sympathetic to Andrea, but she and the film’s other female characters are mostly there for Sean – and by extension the audience – to project their feelings about masculinity on them. And Cilella will never really create a strong dissertation that binds the film’s exploration of masculine identity to the concept of foreign abduction, instead you swing to a familiar trauma for intergeneration.
“They” definitely use Sean’s uncertainty to move with his head, a fact stated in a cryptic sequence that is much like something of a benzon and moorhead movie. A lot of “descendants” are reminiscent of Benson and Moorhead’s work, in fact, both of which are a compliment – they made some of the most interesting genre films in the 2010s – and a challenge for the company to drive their creative limitations a little longer next time. While doing a LO-Fi sci-fi/drama hybrid with an ambiguous ending is probably not necessary To get a rustic movies to be released, the “descendent” does not break this form.
Rating: B-
The “Descendent” world premiered at SXSW 2025. It is set for North American distribution later 2025 from Rlje films.
