The Incomer

Isolation comes in many forms – some societal, some psychological, some physical. The Incomer explores many of them, using as its springboard an extreme example of the physical kind: a remote Scottish island with a population of two.

Grounded in whimsy and wonder but willing to embrace a dark edge, writer/director Louis Paxton’s feature debut depicts the disrupted life of Isla and Sandy, a sister and brother programmed to fear outsiders and avoid the temptation of society’s pull. Any foreign “incomer,” their parents warned, will tell them lies to make the rest of the world sound exciting and appealing.

In some ways, the film feels like the cuter, gentler second cousin of Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2009 masterpiece Dogtooth. That film portrayed a family whose parents keep their children completely isolated from the outside world. By the time we meet Isla and Sandy, they’ve reached adulthood and their parents have long left the picture, but the impact of their ignorance-based upbringing remains.

The film won the top prize in Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT category – a deserved honor, though it feels like a movie with such a superb cast is punching below its weight in a section created to highlight scrappy indie movies. To that point, Domhnall Gleeson plays the title character, Daniel, who arrives on the island clueless and bewildered, and only becomes more so as he meets the siblings, played by Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke, who live in a comedically absurd state of arrested development.

Sandy has never really entered adulthood mentally, so Isla acts as the de facto parental figure. She’s good at enforcing rules, but she’s not so mature that she avoids seemingly nightly sibling spats that result in furniture knocked all over the house. When modern objects show up (most amusingly a sex toy Sandy waves around like a nunchuck), Isla tells him they must be burnt, then hides them in her shed, building a collection of bottles and trinkets reminiscent of The Little Mermaid. The closest thing either of them have to a friend is the presumably hallucinated Fin Man (John Hannah), who spends all his days trying to get Isla to descend into the water, for clearly nefarious purposes.

We learn the backstory in charming black-and-white animated sequences by Selina Wagner (Spindrift), visualising Isla’s stories, which take on the air of folktales. Birds are prominent on the island, and Isla and Sandy identify with gulls. When incomers arrive, they go to battle in bird outfits that would be at home in a pagan horror movie.

That’s how Daniel meets the two, after his boat drops him off and leaves him alone for the convenience of the plot. He doesn’t usually do house calls, but his co-worker is suspended, so he must awkwardly inform the islands inhabitants that they must relocate to the mainland. Isla and Sandy’s first reaction is to hit him on the head with a rock. Daniel continues to try a series of ridiculous things in order to win them over, with varying success. At the same time, it becomes clear that Isla and Sandy are so deprived of company, that they can’t help getting attached to Daniel, both perhaps leaning toward romance.

The scenario is very specific, but opens the door to discussions about societal living, sibling relationships and the various ways people can be – or feel – alone. Sometimes the dialogue is a bit on the nose, but the warm feeling the relationships generate makes that easy to forgive. Put in the position of a salesman for living on the mainland, Daniel must think about the world he has taken for granted, and its actual pluses and minuses. But it turns out that finding your way can be a joyful, sometimes hilarious experience.

Reviewed on: 03 Feb 2026