Someday a movie featuring an argument about Predator vs Hobbit fanfiction will deserve a negative review, but today is not that day. The Incomer is completely deranged (complimentary), and its derangement is entirely character-based, giving the actors the freedom to go as wild as possible, which they did. It’s a scream from start to finish.
Daniel (Domhnall Gleeson) is a socially awkward vegan council worker in Scotland (American translation: he works for the county government). He is informed by his horrible boss Roz (Michelle Gomez, dusting off a version of her much-missed character from British sitcom Green Wing) that an island under their jurisdiction, previously thought to be uninhabited, does actually have people living there. Thanks to a pending court case against the main bailiff Calum (Emun Elliott), it is Daniel being sent to remove them. However. The inhabitants are a pair of adult siblings, Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O’Rourke), who have been alone since the death of their parents when they were children. But that’s fine. They are just fine and very normal actually. They eat birds they catch in nets and shout at the sea and dress up in bird-themed ghillie suits to scare off any incomers. Like any normal people would.
The word normal is possibly the last one you could use about The Incomer, which has an unusual mix of danger and hilarity. Daniel had no idea he’d be dealing with people who have no idea how outside the ordinary world they really are. The movie was shot largely outdoors and cinematographer Pat Golan manages to make the wind, the water and the wildness of the remote Scottish setting extra characters in the mayhem. It can be pretty menacing, especially since both Sandy and Isla have a knack for straightforward violence that’s all the more frightening for being so childish. Suffice to say the siblings get as territorial over Daniel as children squabbling over birthday cake, and Daniel is only able to manage their behaviour by telling them he is a wizard. Any resemblance to Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, if Gandalf was caught up in workplace drama at a local government office, is obviously completely coincidental.
Writer-director Louis Paxton has made a small film huge thanks to letting these kamikaze comic geniuses loose on his hysterical script. For just one example, when Sandy tastes his first banana he cries “My mouth is alive!” Mr. O’Rourke, as the simpler sibling, flings himself into the role of a small boy in a large body with a glee that’s all the more hilarious for being utterly sincere. Ms. Rankin, as the older and slightly wiser sister, ensures that Isla’s robust sense of self comes through clearly under all the hijinks and shenanigans without ever being mawkish. Mr. Gleeson has the tougher part as the straight man, but his air of bewildered disbelief is just as essential to the good time happening here. The argument he has with Calum, done entirely with straight faces, is so supremely stupid it’s a total joy. Pretty much everything about The Incomer is a total joy. It’s rare to see a movie commit so thoroughly to the bit. It probably won the NEXT Innovator Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival thanks to knowing so completely what it was trying to do. And the perfect thrill of The Incomer is how totally, and amusingly, it succeeds.
The Incomer recently played at the Sundance Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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