A school guard haunted by trauma. A sky-lit vision. A wife due any day. And a slow spiral into something he can't explain—or stop.
This isn't just another alien invasion flick with twitching faces and glowing eyes. Descendent , directed by Peter Cilella in his feature debut, is a psychological slow-burn wrapped in sci-fi skin. Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers if Don Siegel had spent more time worrying about therapy bills than pod people.
Ross Marquand plays Sean Bruner—a man who sees things after a light streaks across the night sky. Not monsters, not yet. Just drawings. Vivid, impossible sketches of creatures and deserts that don't exist. Or do they?
It starts with the body. The mind follows.
Cilella, previously known for his short film work, builds tension like smoke—quiet at first, then everywhere. Early reviews hint at strong performances from Marquand and Sarah Bolger as the couple trying to hold onto each other while everything else slips. One critic called it “a smart allegory tackling men's mental health”—a phrase that could sound clinical if the film didn't feel so damn personal.
Because this isn't about aliens invading Earth.
It's about them crawling through the cracks already there.
And those cracks? Childhood trauma. Grief. Fear of failure. Becoming the parent you swore you wouldn't be.
SXSW 2025 gave Descendent its world premiere earlier this year. A festival that often leans toward the weird and experimental found something different here: intimacy wrapped in genre. It's not flashy. It doesn't need to be.
RLJE Films picked it up—and wisely so. They're releasing it August 8th, 2025, in select theaters, followed by VOD on August 15th. Indie horror rarely gets this kind of rollout, but Benson & Moorhead—the producers behind Something in the Dirt and The Endless —bring serious genre cred. Their fingerprints are all over this one.
There's a moment in the trailer where Marquand whispers, “I just want to protect my family.” Then Bolger snaps back, “From what?!”
That's the question, isn't it?
Is it the visions? The past? Something growing inside him?
Or maybe it's himself.
The film's title says enough. Descendent . As in: what we inherit. What we pass on. What haunts us not because it came from outside—but because it was always inside.
I'm not sure if Descendent will stick with me forever. But I know this: when the lights go out, and the baby monitor crackles, and you hear something shift in the hallway—it's not always monsters you're afraid of.
Sometimes it's yourself.
