Descendent (now on Hulu) carries a sort-of double meaning in that title, referring to both physical and genealogical descent. It’s the story of a man, played by The Walking Dead star Ross Marquand, whose anxieties about past parental trauma and his pending fatherhood intersect with a bizarre alien abduction – an alien abduction that may just be a manifestation of mental illness. First-time feature director Peter Cilella shows significant promise behind the camera, finding a sweet spot amidst the stuff of psychodrama, sci-fi and horror.
DESCENDENT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: First rule about being an almost-dad: Don’t stare at your phone through the entire ultrasound appointment. Andrea (Sarah Bolger of The Tudors) forgives Sean (Marquand), though. He was texting his boss, hoping to secure a promotion from being a school security guard to a more lucrative private-security gig. Sean may be pinning his hopes on a desperate dream though – moments after telling Andrea the new job would make them so flush she wouldn’t have to work anymore, his boss something along the lines of prove yourself for a while at this crappy job and then maybe we’ll talk. Sean strikes us as an average guy nursing a bit of masculine insecurity about his roles as a soon-to-be father and family provider; his mother died during childbirth and his father died by suicide seven years later, and Sean was raised by an overbearing adoptive mother, Robin (Susan Wilder), so he has some Stuff Going On In There.
But we’ve only brushed the surface of his… issues. One night he sees a strange light in the sky, zigging and zagging like no aircraft we’ve ever seen. Curious. It happens again later, when he’s on the roof fixing a motion-sensor light, except the light in the sky is brighter, closer, more intense. We see strange images of Sean trapped in sticky weblike material, glistening bony hands doing things of a vaguely experimental-medical nature inserting tubes in his brain – classic yikes I’ve been probed! kind of stuff. He awakens in the hospital with his head bandaged. He fell off the roof, but he’s not too worse for wear – mild concussion, bruises, no broken bones. But where he used to help his pregnant wife out of the car, he’s sore and tender to the point where the roles are reversed.
This is when Sean begins to unravel. Were the aliens just a hallucination or bad dream? He has trouble sleeping. He’s started drawing and painting with significant skill, despite having none previously. His hearing seems weirdly enhanced – he can hear Robin and Andrea talking about their concern for him from far away. He begins seeing things, specifically, people with big glossy reptilian alien eyeballs. He undergoes tests and sees a therapist, and less helpfully, acquires a gun and never tells anyone about the alien stuff. Meanwhile, Andrea’s pregnancy complicates to the point of bed rest, and her increasingly troublingly eccentric hubs may not be capable of caring for her. He’s paranoid. He’s aggressive. He’s falling apart. Enclosed head injuries are rough – especially when they influence a story told from the point-of-view of a person dealing with one.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Bits of Contact (daddy issues) and The Vast of Night (a gem of a lo-fi indie about aliens) crop up, with maybe some of the classic tropes of extraterrestrial visits via Communion and some apprehensive-dad stuff from everything from Knocked Up to Eraserhead.
Performance Worth Watching: Marquand and Bolger make for a terrific on-screen married couple, rooting the film’s extraordinary circumstances within the familiar, realistic rapport between two people who know and love each other significantly.
Sex And Skin: “We’ve reached the limits of what rectal probing can teach us!” So in other words, none.
Our Take: Descendent is essentially Adventures of an Unreliable Narrator, Mental Health Edition. Cilella, who also wrote the screenplay, guides us through a series of recognizable domestic scenarios — life/work balance issues, the agreements and disagreements inherent to marriage, complicated relationships with siblings and parental figures — and similarly recognizable he’s-losing-it moments ranging from scribbling odd drawings to it-was-only-a-dream-or-WAS-it? occurrences (Sean even paints bedroom walls with a brush like a total madman – get a roller, bro!). And it all adds up to something modestly ambitious; its thematic focus on male parental anxiety is well thought-out and somewhat insightful and focused, if a bit thin and repetitive at times.
More impressive is Cilella’s ability to smoothly blend genres, segueing from the stuff of marriage drama to what’s-behind-that-door scares and surreal sci-fi. Descendent doesn’t rely on set pieces to fuel the narrative, but the slow-sinking dread that Sean may be capable of facilitating tragedy. Cilella uses shrewd lighting and sound design – and a touch of body horror – to create a feeling of unease, and never relies on jump scares, overheated traumacore thematics or other cliches that might undermine his intent as a storyteller. A couple of dramatic turns are a small bridge too far, but they don’t derail the movie; same for the ending, which feels somewhat appropriate if vaguely underwhelming. But at least it’s ambiguous enough to be compelling, banking on the truth that brain-zapping aliens are more plausible in the movies than in real life.
Our Call: Descendent is admirable for being a small, low-budget film making the most, and maybe a bit more, out of very little. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.