‘Descendent’ Review: A Moving and Reflective Tale of Fatherhood, Male Loneliness, and Aliens [B+] | SXSW

What do you get when you mix fatherhood anxiety with male loneliness and a touch of aliens? The result is Descendent, a thoughtful piece of sci-fi drama that feels way more personal than the premise may suggest. Writer/director/actor Peter Cilella, in his directorial feature debut, takes great care in the film’s opening minutes. Sean (Ross Marquand, The Walking Dead) and Andrea (Sarah Bolger, A Good Woman is Hard to Find) are a happily married couple in present-day Los Angeles, with a baby on the way. Sean is a school security guard, trying really hard to get a better job so that they would be more financially stable and prepared. Though that anxiety looms over the couple at all times, with additional pressure coming from family relatives, it’s obvious that they’re happy and they’re together.

That all changes one night when Sean begins seeing bright lights in the night sky, of what seems to be like extraterrestrials, and it leads him to a terrible accident. The resulting brain injury triggers a new phenomenon in Sean – he develops a remarkable talent for drawing and painting vivid images. Are they just nightmares and hallucinations of the unknown? Or perhaps they are memories that were locked away?

Throughout the film, Cilella takes his time to unravel Sean’s sanity, as we watch what was once a happy and stable marriage fall apart. Sean can’t make sense of his drawings and what they mean. All he knows is that he has to get them out. Meanwhile, he has an irking feeling that his wife and baby are in danger and he must protect them. What is an expecting father supposed to do in this situation? How can you even communicate that feeling? Sean believes that protection comes first, and that means buying a gun. It’s a small, familiar gesture that actually speaks to a profound social issue today that’s not talked about enough. Men believe that violence and action is the answer to their inner fears, as they often convert their struggles into a problem that must be solved or a challenge that must be overcome with force, when really the solution is supposed to be creating a space for men to openly express that vulnerability. Naturally, when you see a gun in a film, it must fire at some point, but even this familiar trope is handled in an unexpected way. Rather than being used as a typical prop for a climactic action set piece, our Chekhov’s gun here speaks to something deeper and more traumatic for our protagonist, where Cilella values emotional closure above anything else.

Ross Marquand is beautifully sensitive here, as Sean often jumps between helplessness and determination – sometimes in the same scene. It’s a rare kind of male performance, particularly for an actor of Marquand’s physique. It’s easy to just take an actor like Marquand, who’s best known as Aaron from The Walking Dead, and typecast him into physical roles. With Descendent, Marquand and Cilella are remarkably compassionate here, reminding audiences that all men, even the strong-looking ones, need help sometimes.

Meanwhile, as we watch Sean struggle, Andrea is right there on the side in many scenes. What about her worries? Her anxiety? After all, she’s the one who’s pregnant. Though we are much locked into Sean’s psyche, the script gives just enough care to the people around him. Sarah Bolger carries great chemistry with Marquand throughout the film, but it is one particular scene-stealing moment that we are reminded that there are two people in this struggle, and they’re supposed to be helping each other overcome it together. It’s a fantastic performance from Bolger and certainly the most memorable scene in the film.

What is less memorable is whenever the film veers into the science fiction of it all. With names like Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (directors of The Endless and Synchronic) attached as producers, it can set a bit of an expectation for Descendent to be some sort of mindbender. Though the film does have its occasional trippy sequences, from human eyes being replaced with alien eyes to a couple more… err… probing matters, one can easily argue that the film can just be a full-fledged drama without any extraterrestrial elements at all. Sometimes the beam of light and the Communion nods are indeed unsettling, but other times they just distract. Cilella touches on so many ideas in this script, even going into concepts of family legacy once it dives further into Sean’s past. Nearly every psychological and emotional component being explored is more interesting than the science fiction, and that’s perfectly okay.

Cilella prefaced the film’s SXSW premiere by commenting that there are many films made about motherhood anxiety, but we simply don’t see enough films about fatherhood anxiety. He then closed the Q&A by recommending more therapy for men. Perhaps, judging by the sci-fi thrills and how it all ends, Cilella is subliminally telling us that aliens are the best therapists on the planet.

Grade: B+

This review is from the 2025 SXSW Film and Television Festival. RLJ Entertainment will release Descendant in the U.S.