In case there was any doubt as to what kind of movie Scottish director Louis Paxton was making, he wastes no time establishing the tone for “The Incomer” with his opening voiceover narration. “There was once an island far out in the sea,” begins Gayle Rankin’s Isla in a thick Scottish accent. This introductory line clearly sets the stage for an adult fairy tale, complete with a love triangle, “Lord of the Rings” quotes, and a floppy dildo.
Isla lives on the aforementioned remote Scottish isle with just her brother, Sandy (Grant O’Rourke), and a mythology that shapes their lives. “Defend the aisle,” goes their credo, “allow no incomer survive.” The siblings gallivant about their home with gleeful abandon, perched somewhere between overgrown children and human iterations of the gulls who share it with them.
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But that isolation comes to a screeching halt thanks to the arrival of a government employee, Domhnall Gleeson’s Daniel, who comes ashore with orders to ensure no human inhabitants remain on the island. This land recovery coordinator has no idea how defenseless he is when a boat dumps him out on their shores to read off an eviction notice sheepishly. And for a mild-mannered paper-pusher who dreads the face-to-face interaction portion of his job, the immediate hostility he faces from Isla and Sandy confirms his worst fears about other people.
Those feelings of mistrust and suspicion are even stronger among the siblings, who interpret this incomer’s presence as a threat to their very way of life. “The Incomer” plays out like a cross-cultural exchange comedy with simultaneously low and high stakes for the trio. Daniel thinks he can politely bully Isla and Sandy into submission by acting like the functions of his phone make him some wizard, and he later regales them with Tolkien’s tales that he tries to pass off as originating from his own brain.
Yet Paxton refuses to reduce the dynamics to a simplistic portrayal of a colonizer attempting to play out an age-old narrative of geographic and sociocultural displacement. “The Incomer” flips the script and shows that a mainlander like Andrew is the one who has the most to learn from the people he presumes to be more primitive. As it turns out, the character takes such refuge in fantasy stories because he’s never found much connection with people in reality.
That is, of course, until Isla and Sandy’s initial hesitations about their visitor give way to an initiation process to integrate the incomer into their traditions. The film is at its absolute best when it gets to bask in this simple, sincere spirit of expanding one’s idea of belonging. Gleeson throws himself into these new practices with gleeful abandon, and it’s an absolute delight to watch him continue to embrace his comedic chops.
Rankin matches Gleeson’s commitment in a performance. Her Isla lacks most social graces, which demonstrates just how many commonplace reactions are culturally conditioned. (A moment where she interprets the body language of a kiss as a threatening gesture provides a particular comic highlight.) But the film’s breakout star may be Grant O’Rourke, an actor whose prior work was mostly limited to TV. His ability to capture the whimsical humor of a stilted man-child while also bringing in an element of dry wit brings a versatility to “The Incomer” that makes him the true scene-stealer. Sandy has the more intriguing arc, too, as Danny’s presence and affinity for Isla awaken a newfound jealousy inside.
Once “The Incomer” starts getting into the messier details of the brewing sibling rivalry, some of the project’s limitations become more noticeable. Paxton hails from the world of short filmmaking, and that heritage shows in his cinematic grammar. He still heavily leans on tools of narrative efficiency, maximizing the impact of simple techniques like a smash cut to create humor without requiring elaborate setups.
The result is a film that’s always fun to watch but starts to run out of narrative steam at around the hour mark. “The Incomer” can coast for a while on silliness, but that light-hearted tone can begin to approach twee territory – especially when it comes at the expense of exploring the more upsetting dimensions of the story. Isla and Sandy’s backstory hints at inherited parental trauma, the likes of which could rival that of Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Dogtooth.”
There’s room for darkness in these types of fairy tales, as anyone who’s looked at the actual stories that inspired Disney animated classics could testify. But by the end of “The Incomer,” Paxton makes explicit that this is a story about making decisions from an outlook that favors hope over fear. And, at least for the duration of the film, he creates an imaginary universe where such a choice feels both logical and lovable. [B]
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New York-based freelance journalist whose writing appears regularly on Decider, Slant, Slashfilm, and The Playlist, covering film with a focus on cultural context.
