The best alien movies are rarely just about aliens. While Ridley Scott’s genre-defining classic explores themes like corporate corruption, class, and gender, other alien movies like E.T. (1982) and Arrival (2016) utilize extra-terrestrial characters and elements to explore deep and complex questions about humanity. Why are we here? What is our greater purpose? What does it mean to love? Somehow, filmmakers pose answers to these profoundly human questions by telling stories about things that are very much not human. This is the case for writer/director Peter Cilella’s sci-fi/psychological thriller, Descendent. Cilella uses aliens to explore deeply human themes in a way that feels comfortably familiar, making those themes accessible and easy to understand despite the movie’s unconventional and at times confusing plot. Yet, the themes of Descendent are also unique to this particular story, raising questions that are more specific and individualistic than the broader questions about humanity posed by its predecessors.
Ross Marquand as Sean in Peter Cilella’s DESCENDENT. Courtesy of RLJE Films. An RLJE Films Release.
Descendent opens with protagonist Sean (Ross Marquand) and his wife, Andrea (Sarah Bolger), at an ultrasound appointment. They’re expecting their first child. From the way that Sean distractedly answers work-related texts throughout the appointment, you might think that our main character is a business owner or a rising star in the corporate world. But, he’s actually a humble school security guard, eager to start making more money so he can support his growing family. One night, while tinkering with the school’s security equipment, Sean notices a strange bright light hurtling across the sky. A few nights later, he sees the light again — but this time, he has a much closer encounter with the source of the light. After waking up in the hospital, Sean is eager to forget the strange experience and continue helping his wife prepare for their baby. However, the alien encounter has had a peculiar effect on Sean’s mind. Not only does he begin to see things that may or may not be there, but his visions seem vaguely connected to his father and some repressed family trauma from years ago. As the days go by, Sean descends into an all-consuming madness that distances him from his wife and the unborn child he so desperately wants to protect.
Sarah Bolger as Andrea in Peter Cilella’s DESCENDENT. Photo credit: Ethan M Sigmon. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films. An RLJE Films Release.
As a science fiction flick, thriller, and Freudian psychological drama all in one (with a few sprinkles of horror just to fill things out), Descendent has a lot to juggle. It’s able to balance and blend these genres with a consistent and cohesive visual style and mood, blurring the line between Sean’s reality and his crumbling inner world with a depressing grey haze that covers the real world and Sean’s hallucinations equally. Overcast skies, cool-toned costumes, and greige set decor create a subdued sense of melancholy that grounds the jumpy and unconventional plot. Even the more horrific and jarring imagery has an overall drab gray tone, reflecting the depth and persistence of Sean’s anxieties and his grim outlook on life overall. The cast also helps keep Descendent grounded with steady performances, navigating awkward hiccups in the dialogue with as much grace as possible (in one particularly painful hiccup, Sean is subjected to a verbal tirade that actually includes the line, “it’s not the 1950s anymore”). Descendent also has a surprising sense of humor. The jokes are rare, but they’re delightful gems in an otherwise bleak story.
Ross Marquand as Sean in Peter Cilella’s DESCENDENT. Courtesy of RLJE Films. An RLJE Films Release.
Where Descendent struggles to balance and blend its genres is in the way it introduces its central theme: masculinity. The script tells us about Sean’s insecurities as a man, a husband, and a father-to-be far too directly, shoving this information into awkward and forced dialogue rather than letting the main character develop naturally over time. Descendent drops at least five direct references to Sean’s crisis of manhood in the first fifteen minutes alone, and not in a subtle easter-egg kind of way. It hurriedly pushes this theme to the forefront in a way that makes Sean’s inner conflicts seem inauthentic. As soon as the movie starts, it’s a mad dash (despite the slow pace and subdued mood) to reveal that Sean is a workaholic who’s always on call and that he’s obsessive about providing for his pregnant wife. Throw in a sexual rejection, a brief shot of him working out, an insult from his boss about his physical strength, and a snide comment from his best friend’s mom about his father’s financial insufficiencies, and you’ve got yourself a textbook masculine panic. Sean’s laundry list of insecurities is an important part of the plot, but it’s presented in such a heavy-handed manner that it loses credibility.
Ross Marquand as Sean in Peter Cilella’s DESCENDENT. Courtesy of RLJE Films. An RLJE Films Release.
Combined with hit-or-miss dialogue, these heavy-handed themes make for a rocky start. But then, suddenly, things get interesting (as things tend to do when extra-terrestrials are involved). After Sean’s inexplicable encounter with what seem to be brain-probing aliens, Descendent finally begins to find its groove as a thriller. It develops the ability to surprise and intrigue us by fully embracing the structure of a psychotic break, telling the story through Sean’s visions, hallucinations, and memory lapses. After his encounter with the otherworldly, Sean starts to experience life in disconnected bursts with inexplicable lapses in time. We, as the audience, see the entire story through this disjointed point of view. Descendent remains faithful to Sean’s perspective, capturing everything through his altered senses and fractured state of mind. While this structure isn’t as easy to follow as that of the movie’s opening, it forces Descendent to become more nuanced with its themes. In this middle section, Descendent doesn’t just shove narrative information in our faces. In fact, it can’t. The jumps from real-life to dream to hallucination mean that we can’t trust everything we see or hear. We have to question it all and figure out the meaning for ourselves, searching for truth as we witness Sean’s mind coming apart at the seams.
Sarah Bolger as Andrea in Peter Cilella’s DESCENDENT. Photo credit: Ethan M Sigmon. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films. An RLJE Films Release.
In this way, Descendent is fairly effective as a thriller. It will probably throw you for a loop more than once, leading you toward a certain conclusion about what’s really happening to Sean only to do a 180. At times, its fierce loyalty to Sean’s psychotic break can feel like a gimmick. After watching multiple scenes in a row that all turn out to be dreams or hallucinations, you come to expect that Sean’s point of view isn’t exactly grounded in reality. At that point, the “twists” start to lose their effectiveness. But then, Descendent will snap out of this gimmicky lull and surprise us one again. The level of thrill and intrigue may wax and wane, but you can’t deny that Descendent does exactly what it set out to do: capture the point of view of a man who has either had a genuine alien encounter or is descending into total madness.
Ross Marquand as Sean in Peter Cilella’s DESCENDENT. Courtesy of RLJE Films. An RLJE Films Release.
Because of this unconventional structure, Descendent sets up a handful of questions that beg for answers: What’s real and what’s not? Is there a deeper meaning behind Sean’s strange encounters? Is there something sinister afoot, or is it all in his head? In terms of Sean’s internal conflicts, Descendent provides a satisfying and surprisingly heartfelt conclusion. It softens the heavy-handed themes of the opening scenes with a touching and authentic final word on Sean’s masculine identity. However, when it comes to making sense of Sean’s psychic break and his extra-terrestrial experience, Descendent opts for one of the laziest cop-outs in fiction writing, effectively ruining the heartfelt emotional messaging. Descendent has the opportunity to create a pleasantly ambiguous ending — the kind of ending that would leave the audience buzzing with excitement and scrambling for their phone to search for fan theories about the movie online. But, unfortunately, Descendent turns on itself, going for an all-too-easy explanation that cheapens the movie’s messages and themes. To its credit, it does play one last Uno-reverse card in the final shot to add a layer of ambiguity, but at that point, the damage is done. Although probably not intentional, that final shot comes across like a rushed alternate ending to appease audiences in case they don’t like the preceding cop-out of a conclusion, but it’s more frustrating than helpful. While Descendent is firmly faithful to its unconventional structure in the middle section, it gets wishy-washy at the end.
A mixed bag overall, Descendent is at times haunting and intriguing, at times slow and tedious. It brings interesting concepts and a heartfelt story to the table, but the execution isn’t always there. A bit more subtlety and refinement in its themes, along with a more creative resolution, would take Descendent to the next level.
In select theaters August 8th, 2025.
In theaters nationwide and on VOD August 15th, 2025.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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