‘Descendent’ Review: A Security Guard Unravels After Experiencing a Close Encounter in Effective Suspense Drama
variety.comDennis Harvey Film Critic When Richard Dreyfuss walked onto the Mothership at the end of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” it was just about the first time — and also nearly the last — that a movie hero voluntarily went on any such ride.
More familiar notes of terror and disorientation come with the UFO territory of Peter Cilella’s “Descendent.” It has “The Walking Dead’s” Ross Marquand as a working-class Southern Californian whose world comes unglued once he suffers an apparent alien abduction.
Occupying the slippery-reality realm of “Jacob’s Ladder,” this effective first feature, debuting at SXSW, limns its protagonist’s unraveling with suspenseful skill.
But those expecting straightforward sci-fi horror may resent the writer-director’s insistence on sticking to an ambiguity, played somewhere between the narrative models of “Communion” and “Mysterious Skin.” Cilella never fully resolves whether our protagonist is, indeed, the victim of extraterrestrial meddling or instead suffering delusions triggered by delayed childhood-trauma memories, leaving the story suspended in irresolution.
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