The Incomer

It's almost a sub-genre these days: One or two people on one of the many tiny British Islands who have some encounter with the outside world. One of the best movies of the early part of the year, The Ballad of Wallis Island, is a comedy-drama in that vein.  (Actually filmed on a Welsh beach.) The dreadful Enys Man (2022) is a horror movie of sorts taking place on a Cornish Island. And now we have The Incomer, about a brother and sister who have lived alone on a Scottish Island for thirty years, since their father died.

First break in realism: The siblings Isla and Sandy (Gayle Rankin and Grant O'Rourke) are mostly intelligible.

Daniel (Domhnall Gleeson, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Ex Machina) is sent by his banally evil boss to remove these two people "for their own good", and she's picked the worst possible person for the job because her usual guy, Calum (Emun Elliot, who is hilarious in the role), dislocated the hip of his last eviction target.

Isla and Sandy are wee bit off, having lived alone for thirty years, and having been left with an odd mythology about their island. Eventually, we piece together that their pa was a bit off, too. Isla talks to a "fin-man" in one of the islands secluded coves. He's always trying to get her jump in to the water. (Played by the same actor who plays her father.)

Things wash up on to shore, and Isla pretends to destroy them, instead keeping them in a cabin Sandy's not allowed to go into. Sandy is childlike, and in some ways the two seem frozen at the ages they were probably orphaned at. The two spend some amount of time daily preparing for "the incomers"—the invaders that will try to take them off the island.

When Daniel comes to shore, they immediately clonk him and tie him up.

Hilarity ensues as they fight for his attention—they've only had each other for decades, after all—and consider the possibility of a wider world. Daniel is a terrible advocate for it, of course. He tells Isla she'll be happy on the mainland, and she asks if he is happy on the mainland. (Of course, he's not.)

Writer/director Louis Paxton's best feat here is to keep the proceedings light. There are places where it could get very dark—it's necessarily a little dark—and he steers things to comedic and lightly absurdist realms. We get to feel like the characters are real; We don't have to look at the abstract question of "civilization vs. wilderness" because, really, there's nothing great about the island. If Father/Fin-man (John Hannah, probably best known for the Brendan Fraser Mummy series) has a point or a passion, it's long lost. 

Keeping it a simple, local, human problem makes it all more entertaining and moving.

I figured it was unrated but it actually has an "R" rating for "brief, graphic nudity." This seems to refer to an animated section which both The Boy and I immediately forgot. There are some doodles showing squiggles meant to represent genitalia. If that's not a problem, this is going to be a good time for you.

With a "blink and you'll miss it" release, you'll have to see it via streaming, of course.