Studio:   RLJE Films
Director: Peter Cilella
Writer:   Peter Cilella
Producer: David Lawson Jr., Caleb Ward, Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Stars:    Ross Marquand, Sarah Bolger, Susan Wilder, Brandon Scott, Parvesh Cheena, Charlene Amoia, Dan O’Brien, Emily Pendergast, Alexandra Barreto, Martin Garcia, Andre Hyland

Review Score:

Summary:

Following a strange encounter with a light in the sky, disturbing visions thrust a first-time father into a psychological spiral.

Synopsis:

Sean Bruner, a financially struggling elementary school security guard facing fears of first-time fatherhood due to his wife Andrea’s pregnancy, notices a distant light streaking strangely in the sky one evening. At work, Sean recommends replacing a faulty electronic gate to his boss, Principal Kakkar, but Sean is dismissed as well as disappointed to learn Kakkar isn’t yet willing to recommend Sean for a better job opportunity.

In addition to attending regular OBGYN appointments and birthing classes together, Sean and Andrea visit Sean’s best friend Christian and Christian’s wife Laurie for a party. Christian’s mother Robin, who raised Sean after his widowed father shot himself when Sean was seven, continues treating Sean with casual condescension. Sean also has a moment with Christian where he mentions his interest in Christian’s gun collection.

Sean is called into work at night to fix the faulty gate alarm. Noticing a flickering light, Sean climbs onto a roof to fix it. While on the roof, a bright light approaches and entrances Sean.

Sean has a sudden vision of unseen entities probing him with tubes while restrained. Sean also sees his father lying next to him with a hole in his head from his suicide’s gunshot wound.

Sean wakes in a hospital to learn he fell off the roof and was unconscious for two days. Afterward, Sean begins regularly experiencing troubling visions such as seeing his wife in painful labor, people with bugged-out eyes, disturbing doppelgangers, and alien creatures. When he overhears Robin belittling him to Andrea, Sean realizes he now has enhanced hearing where he can pick up on nearby conversations as though he is listening over a radio. Sean also begins painting and drawing numerous sketches of unknown landmarks, his father, a pregnant woman with tentacles, and other strange imagery, sometimes with no memory of having created the visual.

A stray dog identical to the pet he had from childhood inexplicably appears in Sean’s home. Unable to deal with Andrea’s pregnancy as well as an animal, Sean gives the dog to Christian to take care of.

Following a vision where he sees himself with an alien eye while violently scratching a gouge in his arm, Sean confides in his wife that he feels far away from her and their baby. Sean adds that he hopes his drawings will somehow lead him back to Andrea. A later interaction results in an emotional discussion where Andrea admits she is also terrified about her pregnancy.

Sean explains his situation to Dr. Lilliard, whose exam uncovers nothing unusual in Sean’s brain. Lilliard refers Sean to a psychologist, Dr. Sturgill.

In his first session with Dr. Sturgill, Sean recognizes her familiar face from his visions. Sean details childhood trauma stemming from his mother dying in childbirth, his father’s suicide, and subsequently living with Christian’s family.

An appointment with OBGYN Dr. Witten uncovers an abnormality with Andrea’s pregnancy. Despite the doctor’s assurances that everything will be ok, Sean becomes frustrated and frightened.

While posting flyers regarding the found dog, the sounds of a crying baby draw Sean into a rundown building. There, Sean confronts a vision of a drowning newborn he is unable to help.

Despite his friend’s concerns, Sean convinces Christian to give him a handgun, citing that he wants it to feel safe and protected. Upon discovering Sean brought a gun into their house, Andrea insists that Sean get rid of it.

Sean is reprimanded by Principal Kakkar for forgetting to close the security gate overnight. Kakkar shows Sean that “Break free from Aster” was spray-painted on a wall.

Sean visits Robin to ask her what “Aster” is. Robin reveals Aster is the name of the road in the desert where Sean’s father raised him. Seeing Robin with alien eyes, Sean accuses her of being one of “them” who has been messing with his mind. Believing that none of this is really happening, Sean uses a knife to cut his hand and ends up with a bloody gash.

After arriving at work, Sean accidentally knocks the handgun out of his car’s glovebox. The gun fires, but the bullet misses Sean and hits a headrest. The incident results in Sean losing his job. Sean later takes the gun to a beach where he ends up discarding it in a trashcan.

Sean returns home to find a disapproving Robin and angry Laurie waiting for him. Having heard about the gun and losing his job, Laurie berates Sean by telling him he is not pulling his weight and will have to stay with Christian until Andrea forgives him. Sean insists on seeing Andrea because she recently fainted, but Andrea solemnly reiterates that she wants him to leave.

After another session with Dr. Sturgill and more unsettling visions, Sean drives into the desert toward Aster Road. Along the way, Sean recognizes various landmarks from his sketches.

At his childhood home, Sean sits with a vision of his father, who regards Sean as a friendly man rather than his son. As part of their heartfelt conversation with each other, Sean’s father tells Sean he will be a good dad because he is strong. Sean assures his father that his son loves him.

Sean’s father asks him to retrieve more beers from the fridge. Before heading inside, Sean puts his hand on his father’s shoulder and says, “thank you.” Sean then hears a gunshot. Sean turns around to see that his father vanished.

Sean immediately flashes back to the night he fell off the roof in a blinding light. An unknown man with a notebook full of handwritten names and coordinates helps Sean recover. Declining to identify himself, the man cryptically references the difficulty of “reentry” while also mentioning that “they” have been digging around in Sean’s brain all night.

The man drives Sean home where he finds Andrea sleeping peacefully in their bed. Feeling relieved and content, Sean lays beside her. The camera pulls back to show Sean’s numerous sketches posted all over the bedroom wall.

Review:

Now that they’ve mostly moved on to the big leagues of major Marvel series including “Moon Knight,” “Loki,” and “Daredevil: Born Again,” it makes sense that Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead would pass their low-budget chiller torch to Peter Cilella, the actor turned director who previously played a recurring role in the filmmaking duo’s outstanding 2012 mindbender “Resolution” (review here) and its 2017 follow-up “The Endless” (review here). Cilella also appeared in similarly styled movies like “Contracted: Phase II” (review here) and “Dementia,” so it also makes sense that his radio frequency for genre filmmaking is tuned toward lean aesthetics complemented by subtly unsettling creeps.

That’s how “Descendent,” Cilella’s directorial feature debut co-produced by Benson and Moorhead, ends up tapping the same vein of quieter, cerebral terror as the aforementioned movies as well as thrillers like “Entrance” (review here) and “The Pact” (review here). In other words, there’s a 2010s indie horror vibe running through “Descendent,” which I mean in the most complimentary manner possible.

Also like those other titles, “Descendent” takes place in a grounded reality that’s just slightly off-center in tangible and intangible ways. The location is Los Angeles, not the bustling hub of activity, but an average neighborhood with affordable housing for blue-collar families. It’s a gloomy corner of the city too; I’m not even sure how the production managed to find this many rainy, overcast days to shoot in Southern California.

Sean (Ross Marquand) can also be described as average, although that shouldn’t be seen as a synonym for common. Sean works as an elementary school security guard, a profession few people pay much mind too, certainly in terms of what fictional protagonists ordinarily do for their livings. In depicting his relatively normal life, Sean is shown bench-pressing in his garage, attending a backyard BBQ, and accompanying his pregnant wife Andrea to medical exams and birthing classes.

For someone who initially appears so familiar, Sean gets another slight tilt to his characterization through unusual family dynamics. “Descendent” isn’t structured nonlinearly so much as it’s edited to omit snippets of information later revealed at a different time or in a different way. Among the background that comes together gradually is the revelation that Sean’s mother died during childbirth and his father committed suicide seven years later. That left Sean to be raised in the home of his best friend Christian, whose mother Robin still treats Sean with casual condescension intended to remind him of her perpetual disappointment without openly inviting verbal retaliation.

One evening, Sean gets called into work to fix a faulty alarm. While on a roof, Sean becomes entranced by a bright light streaking from the sky. Suddenly, Sean finds himself restrained to a table while unseen entities probe him with intrusive tubes. Then his dead father, with a hole in his head, turns toward Sean from an adjacent table.

Sean wakes to learn he fell off the roof and fell unconscious. After days of recovery, Sean’s return to routine finds him regularly haunted by unnerving visions like his wife experiencing painful labor, people staring at him with bugged-out eyes, even disembodied experiences where he observes his own disturbing doppelganger. In the meantime, as anxiety piles up from dealing with his unstable personality and confronting impending parenthood, Sean is inexplicably driven to draw sketches of images he doesn’t understand, including unknown landmarks, alien creatures, and images from childhood.

“Descendent” gets more depth from what’s not onscreen rather than from what is. Most of the movie consists of watching actor Ross Marquand emote an unraveling mind whose psychological spiraling we’ve seen in other films, except this time, the metaphors are pointed down a very specific direction. That direction takes “Descendent” into a study of an uncertain man facing the fear of becoming a first-time father and coming to terms with a midpoint in life that may not be in its optimal position. One of those themes is more relatable than the other, though the combination of both means the reflective introspection motivating monstrous insinuations has too tight of a focus for broad appeal. Even interpretive types who see thought-provoking echoes in Sean’s situation may not find firm resolutions in the fiction that might make the narrative more fulfilling.

“Descendent” also inches forward patiently, creating a pace displeasing to action-hungry audiences. But shocks and spectacle intentionally aren’t included. Using calm camera moves, shadowed scenery, and an occasional static-distorted voice, the movie unfolds suggestive atmosphere without being obviously deliberate about it. Despite the drawbacks these qualities concurrently come with, “Descendent” evokes the kind of ethereal eeriness that comes from suburban settings, scaled-down production design, and a little wiggle room for finding emotional meaning to deliver a personal story floating on a true indie feel.

Review Score: 65