Descendent

Vampires are scary. Werewolves. Clowns! Clowns are scary. Dudes in horse head masks. You know what’s scarier still? Those last weeks leading to the birth of your first child. Damn, nothing on earth will make you feel more unprepared or likelier to die (if the baby is in your belly) than that.

Andrea (Sarah Bolger) and Sean (Ross Marquand) are feeling it. Andrea’s about 8 weeks out, and it would seem Sean’s biggest anxiety is the worry that his gig as a private school security guard won’t cut it. But as writer/director Peter Cilella slowly unveils information in his sci-fi thriller Descendent, we learn there’s a lot more plaguing Sean than underemployment.

Climbing on the roof of the school one evening to change a lightbulb, Sean is mesmerized by a light in the sky. The next thing he knows, he’s in a hospital bed trying to shake nightmares of an alien abduction and get his head straight so he can get back to work and stop being a burden on his very pregnant wife.

But Sean is not the same since the fall. Or since whatever happened that night on the roof.

Cilella shows sharp instincts for creating trippy tension. His script manages to blur reality without abandoning logic. More importantly, as Sean’s jarring bouts of unreality reach a crescendo, Cilella never lets go of the truth of the film’s emotional core. We are all terrified to become parents.

Bolger makes sure Andrea is always a partner, a full character, never the beleaguered but supportive wife. These two feel like an actual married couple, buddies and partners, each shielding the other from their own fear of inadequacy. But Descendent rises and falls with Marquand.

Haunted and occasionally frightening without ever losing your compassion, Marquand’s authentic and sympathetic performance grounds the fantastical and allows the metaphor at the center of the horror to ring true.

Descendent is an impressive piece of homegrown intergalactic horror worth your time.