If The Banshees of Inisherin were set in Scotland and recast as a humorous and heartwarming folk tale about the clash between the primitive and modern world, it would resemble The Incomer, a winningly weird comedy—premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival—about isolation and community.
Writer/director Louis Paxton’s feature debut has a wittiness that’s almost as odd as its heart is big, and in star Gayle Rankin, he finds a perfect match for his strange-and-sweet sensibilities. All of which shine through this bizarro story about a brother and sister whose solitary lives on the isle they call home are disrupted by the arrival of a bureaucrat tasked with evicting them.
Tapping into a variety of timely undercurrents without ever drawing clear, straight lines between its fiction and reality, it’s an indie that may not have the heft of Martin McDonagh’s Oscar-nominated predecessor, but boasts an absurdity that’s frequently laugh-out-loud funny.
From the start, The Incomer posits itself as the sort of fable that Isla (Rankin) reads at night in the ramshackle house she shares with her brother Sandy (Grant O’Rourke) on the remote Scottish island where they were raised. For 30 years, Isla and Sandy have resided on this barren rock with no company except each other and the swarms of seabirds that fly overhead (and which, ignoring the warnings of The Lighthouse, they kill and eat).
Without any adult supervision or connection to the mainland, the two have developed into daffy eccentrics, epitomized by their habits of dressing as gulls (in creepy masks and capes), squawking at each other as a means of saying grace, and training to defend their land from invaders—whom they refer to as “incomers”—with maximum violence.
Isla and Sandy are babes in the woods, and their reaction to the arrival of Daniel (The Paper’s Domhnall Gleeson) is immaturely hostile, viewing him as a profound threat to their sovereignty and igniting their severe self-preservation instincts.
Given that they often fight each other over the smallest slight, it’s perfectly in character for Isla and Sandy to go to extremes over Daniel’s arrival, and the visitor is far from prepared for the insane welcome he receives. A land recovery coordinator who’s been assigned to kick these two off the island by his sneering boss Roz (Michelle Gomez), Daniel is terrified by Isla and Sandy, who answer his initial question— “Have you got WIFI?”—by throwing a rock at his head, after which they dangle him off the edge of a cliff and chain him up.
The siblings’ behavior is uninhibited to the point of being feral, be it Sandy talking about his “bottom mess” or Isla standing over her brother like a maniac before waking him with a sudden smack. For all his meekness, Daniel is a bit peculiar himself, as he proves when he attempts to scare Sandy and Isla by pretending to be a wizard with the aid of an iPhone that he claims can steal souls (by taking pictures).
It’s not the interloper’s ruse, however, that saves his hide; rather, it’s his friendliness, his patience, and his talk about the mainland and the many items he’s brought from it, including a banana that blows Sandy’s mind (“My mouth is ALIVE!”).
Sandy is a man-child who quickly takes to Daniel, and though she’s initially threatened by this dynamic—because she fears losing her grip on the island and her brother—Isla soon warms to the official, whom Gleeson plays as a dorky guy whose initial terror is ultimately overshadowed by his sincere desire to help. As it turns out, that’s a difficult undertaking, since the duo have been deeply scarred and warped by being abandoned by their now-deceased parents, such that Isla routinely speaks with a mythical Finman (John Hannah) who, floating just offshore, creepily tries to convince her to join him in the deep, dark, watery depths.
Hannah’s fantastical creature is at once unnerving and amusing, the latter courtesy of his bonkers entreaties. (In one instance, he entices her to come see a crab wearing a hat.) That balance is emblematic of The Incomer, which fleshes out the island’s backstory via black-and-white animated sequences that contribute to the film’s storybook atmosphere.
Paxton exhibits assured command of his off-kilter tone, with whooshing zooms and sharp cutting (regularly from chaotic to quiet moments) heightening the proceedings’ zaniness, and calmer passages allowing his performers to keep the action at least somewhat emotionally grounded.
As a recluse whose craziness is a byproduct of deep parental wounds, Rankin demonstrates formidable dexterity in The Incomer, her Isla an abrasive loon who’s also a relatable outsider desperate to cling to the things she knows and fearful of the things she doesn’t. Her wild-eyed intensity supercharges the film’s madness, while O’Rourke lends it a lovable stunted-adolescent charm and Gleeson serves as its empathetic core. Together, they make for an engaging trio, and Paxton gives them a memorable adversary in Emun Elliott’s Calum, a psycho whose fear of dehydration compels him to take mind-bogglingly inane measures that leave Daniel flabbergasted and grossed out.
As befitting a film crafted in a fairy tale mold, The Incomer is at least partially about storytelling’s capacity to enlighten and transform—a notion underscored by the effect that Daniel’s remixed, highly personal retelling of The Lord of the Rings has on Isla and Sandy.
Paxton’s script is a bit too thematically scattered to do justice to that idea, and the same goes for its portrait of Sandy’s budding sexuality and, with it, the celebration of its characters’ newfound agency. Still, it elicits more than its fair share of chuckles, most of them thanks to its off-the-wall impulses and a Rankin performance whose goofiness goes hand-in-hand with its volatility.
Culminating in costumed confrontations and epiphanies about the true nature of happiness and home, The Incomer occasionally flirts with cloying quirkiness, but always manages to maintain a steady comedic equilibrium.
That suggests Paxton is a filmmaker with a bright future and that Rankin, after years in supporting roles in The Greatest Showman, GLOW, Perry Mason, and House of the Dragon, is ready for the spotlight.
