Who Says You Can’t Go Home? A Look at Sundance's "The Incomer"

[the following review is spoiler-free]

On an Island in the sea, there were once two gulls, a brother and a sister…

So opens The Incomer, a dark comedy written and directed by Louis Paxton, starring Domhnall Gleeson and executive produced by Moby and Trevor Noah. Shot and set in Scotland, I found The Incomer to be a quintessentially Scottish film - to the point where my only real criticism was that I struggled to understand certain words due to the thickness of the accents. 

The film centers around Daniel (Gleeson), a fantasy obsessed council worker, who is sent on assignment to a remote Scottish Isle where he is tasked with evicting the island’s final two inhabitants. Sister and brother Isla and Sandy, played by Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke respectively, have served as gulls, guardians of Ork Isle - their ancestral home - on their own for the last 30 years. After losing their mother to illness, their father commanded them to protect the island before throwing himself into the sea, sacrificing himself to the so-called “Fin Men,” vicious humanoid seal monsters who haunt the sea around Ork Isle. Explored through a series of charming animated segments, the legend of Ork Isle and the Fin Men is told by Isla, who takes a sort of pseudo-motherly role to her emotionally immature brother. This immaturity (illustrated early in the film by Sandy’s ignorant fascination with a rubber sex toy) serves as a sort of key into the film’s main theme: growing up. 

O’Rourke’s portrayal of Sandy is by far the stand out performance of the film. Ostensibly a man child, Sandy’s ignorance is typically played for laughs, but also manifests itself in incredibly painful scenes where we watch this middle aged man confront the confusing emotions that most of us learn to deal with in grade school. When Daniel finally arrives on the island, Sandy must suddenly deal with possibly the most exciting and terrifying situation of his isolated life - actually liking someone else. While Sandy’s infatuation starts as a simple interest in what new things the mainlander can bring him, it soon blossoms into friendship, and perhaps even more. The total lack of sexuality between the gull siblings results in an intense transference upon their new arrival, with the competition between siblings being the secondary source of drama to Daniel’s effort to evict the duo without being thrown off a cliff. 

Frustrated with his lack of progress, Daniel’s boss (played by Dr. Who’s Michelle Gomez) sends Calum (Emun Elliott), Daniel’s under-investigation co-worker who is noted to “handle the in-person evictions” most of the time. Despite his initial intimidating demeanor, Calum spends much of his screen time engaging in goofy, wannabe Bear Grylls antics - making Elliott another comedic stand out in the film’s rather small cast.

Photo by Lauren Wester/Sundance Institute

Much of the film’s emotional heavy lifting is done by Rankin and Gleeson, whose enemies-to-lovers arc is fraught with Isla’s reluctance to leave the island; an act that would require her to address the trauma caused by her father’s death; unraveling the fantasy that he constructed and she maintained for the last three decades. Isla frequently communes with a Fin Man, who tempts her with the same proposition that took her father: join us in eternal slumber so that your loved ones may be safe from our wrath.

Daniel, depressed by the fact that his job often entails kicking people out onto the street, commiserates with her, and shows her that there is still beauty in seemingly hopeless situations. As a child at heart, Daniel connects easily with the emotionally stunted islanders, regaling them with story that may or may not be a slightly altered take on Lord of The Rings, and eventually conquering some fears of his own in order to earn the respect and camaraderie of the gulls. 

The climax of the film is both heartbreaking and effortlessly comedic, as the Islanders know they can only hold out so long before the authorities come and remove them by force. Daniel, as sympathetic to the Islanders as he is, has known this the entire time, and truly struggled to make Isla and Sandy see the futility of their situation. Despite their reluctance to “grow up” and leave the island, the world stops for no one, and Sandy and Isla must face the fact that no matter how many Incomers they defeat or adopt, there will always be more of them coming to take them away from the island.

Ending on a bittersweet note, The Incomer reflects on the role that one’s childhood plays in an adult’s life. We must all leave our childhoods at some point, whether that means leaving home or getting a job or learning to take responsibility for our own actions, it is crucial in the development of a healthy adult life. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t go back every once in a while. You may feel like a stranger in your childhood home, marvel at young faces that pass you on their way to school, even find that the world you once lived in is too small for you now, but you are still you, and nothing, no amount of drudgery and mundanity can take the spark of childlike wonder from you.