The Incomer is why you don’t write off a movie just by its trailer. The trailer for it is cute as you’ll see below. But I expected a quirky indie constantly pointing at itself how cute it is. With great effort, I tried to walk in with an open heart, and unlike, but also like, the siblings in the movie, I found the smile on my face growing bigger and bigger with each new moment. Though I will never pray to the power of the gull, the possum’s of the sky.
Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O’Rourke) are siblings living on a remote Scottish island, and have been there for over 30 years. Instructed to scare off any “Incomers”, they frighten people away, keeping them safe…but alone. But then, one Incomer, one Daniel (Domhnall Gleeson) of the land recovery coordinators, arrives to formally tell Isla and Sandy they have to vacate or be forcibly removed from the island. This information is met with a rock to the face…but also some curiosity from the brother/sister, as well as even a little from Daniel himself.
I’ll give writer/director Louis Paxton a lot of credit. When you get someone like Domhnall Gleeson, you would probably try to build your movie around him right? But no, Paxton realizes Daniel is the plot driver here, while the siblings are The Incomer’s real story. Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke have a blast with Paxton building a whole world of thought divorced from human existence. Each new piece of day to day life we learn about them is a treat, like how they eat food, or how things like religion or folklore develop without any other influences. Also, when real human things are brought up (toothbrushes, Internet, Gandalf) by Daniel, the follow up questions from Isla and Sandy are even more interesting, whether they come optimistically (Sandy) or skeptically (Isla). Gleeson is game for being the straw in the drink too: his reaction shots of either eye rolling disappointment or sometimes abject horror when Sandy open slaps Isla show he’s learned some stuff being on a decent sitcom. That, and how to be a great ensemble player.
That infectious innocent enthusiasm has the audience onboard too. The gull meat and Scottish potatoes of The Incomer is what you might expect. You’ll be shocked to hear that 30 years alone on an island has made Isla and Sandy both pretty gosh darn lonely, yearning for love or even settling for a new friend. Daniel senses those feelings immediately because he shares them himself, a bit the black sheep of his office job. Eventually the movie has to get to those feelings and go into the indie well we expect the movie to. But because of the joy we’ve gotten for an hour or so, we want this trio to find some sort of happiness, so we’ll allow that self-discovery. Paxton pays it off at least by winking at us a few times, using the fish in a barrel weirdness to pervade some of the choices of Daniel, Sandy, and Isla as more Incomers arrive, maybe even weirder than these 3.
If that’s not working, at least you’ll get a wonderful look at Scottish Highlands. This movie’s a low stakes riot of a film that would be good for a grandpa with a sense of humor or an Anglophile grandma with some tolerance for physical violence. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s all in good fun here. And if you take that out of context, I’ll make my own gull outfit and haunt you for the rest of your existence, Incomer!