With founders Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, masterminds of such low-budget horror as “Resolution,” “Spring,” and “The Endless,” now entrenched in the Marvel machine, their Rustic Films is calling in the reserves. “Descendent” writer/director Peter Cilella has been involved with multiple Rustic productions as an actor, going all the way back to “Resolution” in 2012. Now, he’s the latest member of the Los Angeles-based production company’s roster — he’s preceded by Michael Felker, whose “Things Will Be Different” debuted under the Rustic banner last year — to get his turn in the big chair, so to speak. 

At the film’s SXSW premiere, Cilella described his feature directorial debut as being about “depression, anxiety, and aliens.” And the film’s priorities do unfold in that order. There’s also some soul-searching about what it means to be a man in contemporary America, a topic that’s too often hijacked by right-wing misogynists but is given an earnest and even-handed treatment here. And if you are invested in, or at least open to, exploring this theme, “Descendent” is engaging and thoughtful throughout. But extraterrestrial enthusiasts should know that this movie is about 90 percent dad stuff, and only 10 percent aliens. 

Our protagonist, Sean Bruner (Ross Marquand), is a security guard working at a private school in Los Angeles who’s fraying under the pressures of impending fatherhood. Along with the usual difficulties — bed rest, birthing classes, the high costs of healthcare and baby formula — anticipating his first child is bringing a lot of baggage with Sean’s own father to the surface. Sean’s dad died by suicide when he was seven, which is tragic. But there are more and weirder undercurrents to the situation, as we discover over the course of the film. 

As it turns out, Sean’s father was labeled a crackpot because he claimed to have encountered a UFO in the high desert of inland California, setting the stage for his eventual death. And Sean’s abandonment issues go into overdrive when he has his own terrifying and inexplicable encounter with a “non-human biologic,” as the U.S. government is now calling them. He wakes up in 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, that ends up being literal.

Sean fears losing his sanity, losing his family, and potentially losing his life if he’s too vocal about what happened to him. And given that he’s a traditional family man who wants to provide for his wife Andrea (Sarah Bolger) and their child, vulnerability has never been his forte. So he suffers quietly, scribbling windmills on his notepad and borrowing a gun from his best friend “for protection.” His childhood dog — or is it? — suddenly reappears, but he doesn’t question it until past and present collapse in on each other so completely that even this fragmented man has to notice. 

Viewers who are well versed in alien lore will recognize Sean’s symptoms, all of which are commonly reported by abductees. A lot of them also indicate a psychotic break, introducing an element of ambiguity that’s true to life and also smart for an independent filmmaker without a huge budget for alien effects. Instead, Marquand, best known for his roles on “The Walking Dead” and in various Marvel properties, carries the film on his burly back. And we lose the plot with him, building to a finale that’s equal parts frustrating and haunting. 

“Descendent” implies that what Sean is experiencing is real, returning multiple times to the same few horrific seconds of Sean being trapped in a netlike membrane and having a needle inserted into his brain a lá 1993’s “Fire in the Sky.” That film is also mostly a drama, but it saves its heart-stopping alien sequence for the end. “Descendent” gradually dials up the hallucinatory elements, the coolest of these are the reptilian eyes that Sean imagines he sees first on strangers and then those closest to him. Cilella enhances them with judiciously applied VFX and evocative sound effects, particularly Andrea crying and screaming in pain. 

As sometimes happens with stories about men and their pregnant wives, there’s a whole parallel horror movie out there somewhere that centers on Andrea and her growing panic that she can no longer trust the man on whom she’s forced to depend. “Descendent” is sympathetic toward 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 onto them. And Cilella never quite gets around to establishing a strong thesis tying the film’s exploration of masculine identity to the concept of alien abduction, instead pivoting into a familiar intergenerational trauma theme. 

“They” definitely use Sean’s insecurities to mess with his head, a fact that’s stated in a cryptic sequence that’s very much like something out of a Benson and Moorhead movie. A lot of “Descendent” is reminiscent of Benson and Moorhead’s work, actually, which is both a compliment — they made some of the most interesting genre films of the 2010s — and a challenge for the company to push its creative limits a little further next time. While making a lo-fi sci-fi/drama hybrid with an ambiguous ending is presumably not required to get a Rustic Films release, “Descendent” doesn’t break this mold. 

Grade: B-

“Descendent” world premiered at SXSW 2025. It is set for North American distribution later in 2025 from RLJE Films.

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