Two siblings on a tiny Scottish island are visited by a local council worker with orders to evict them.
A brother and sister live in splendid isolation on a supposedly uninhabited Scottish island, until their hard and solitary life is interrupted by an incursion by a council-sent intruder. They try to repel him the way they have always repelled unwary visitors: dressing up as crusader Big Birds and flapping ominously, and wielding Captain Caveman clubs.
It’s weird, but it’s funny. Imagine 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple crossed with the The Whicker Man, and made into a heartfelt comedy.
Isla and Sandy have managed to scare off unwary visitors so far, but they haven’t reckoned on the unstoppable force that is a local council wanting to deflect attention from what it should be doing by expending money and manpower on what can probably wait. The siblings are living on the island illegally; so evil department boss Roz (Michelle Gomez, doing much with few words) sends gentle Lord of the Rings fan and office drone Daniel (Domhnall Gleeson) to kick the siblings off their isle and resettle them on the mainland.
I wouldn’t call The Incomer whimsical, though initially that’s what we’re set up to absorb (the knitwear, the made-up phrases, the brightly-coloured dildo washed up on the shore which the thirtysomething Sandy waves around his head like a slingshot).
As the story unfolds the unrelenting sadness of their origins looms ever larger, and in any case the worldview of Isla, the sister, is too bleak and hard for whimsy. Isla (a heartbreaking Gayle Rankin) thinks most problems can be solved by clubbing someone to death.
The Incomer is, underneath, a tragedy; though less about Isla and Sandy (Grant O’Rourke) now being forced to leave and integrate, than being previously forced to stay and isolate. The sea itself is now the unwelcome third presence in the siblings’ relationship, until the arrival of the all-too-human Daniel.
Domhnall Gleeson as “land recovery coordinator” Daniel
Louis Paxton, who wrote and directed, lightens the mood not just with the pair’s madcap antics (they are still children in adult bodies, particularly Sandy) but also with two increasingly desperate side characters.
These two – would-be kidnappers at opposite ends of the reality spectrum – may be endearingly terrible at their allotted roles but it can at least never be said they did not throw themselves at the tasks presented to them. I write, of course, of the mythical finman of Isla’s imagination and the sadly too-real council hardman Calum.
The finman (a hilariously sneaky John Hannah) is a murky-coloured creature living just offshore, who constantly tries to seduce Isla into joining him in the icy depths, mainly with offers of food and his own brand of tempting whimsy (“the crab has a wee hat!”).
Calum (Emun Elliott) is a suspended office worker sent by Roz to sort out Isla, Sandy and Daniel. Arriving equipped with litres of his own emergency urine (water being hard to come by in Scotland), he strips off and paints himself black. Scurrying around the island, searching for someone to evict, he looks not unlike the finman but in y-fronts.
It’s a hard life on the island but to Isla and Sandy, they are normal. When there is no one else to disturb then why wouldn’t you squawk at the gulls when they squawk at you? Weirder to them is the idea of an avocado brought from thousands of miles away, or the internet. Or being a vegan.
Daniel’s arrival – both are in some way attracted to him – forces the siblings to look at their own lives, particularly Isla, the leader of the two. Her attraction to him matches her unspoken attachment to the mainland. It draws her even though she is terrified of it. (Sandy lives much more in the moment though declares he would like to see Daniel’s bum.)
The switches between the film’s quite broadbrush comedy (giant bird costumes, Daniel being held over a cliff edge while the siblings decide whether to throw him over into the sea, Sandy’s comments on “bottom mess”) and the desperately sad stories behind their current existence feel rather clunky.
The animated stories of their past (by Scottish animator Selina Wagner) work beautifully though, the naive hand-drawings a melancholy but effective way to explain the oral history of the island and of the siblings; Isla, telling these tall tales, may be a witness anchored to the land, but in rewriting their own troubling history as she weaves it into seafaring myths of old she’s an unreliable one.
The little ensemble cast is terrific. Rankin and O’Rourke, who have that sibling relationship down pat; Rankin is superb in the tougher role, as Isla is both protective mother and yearning girl, homespun warrior and fearful bully. I loved Hannah, playing his devious-but-dim finman completely straight; while Gleeson is dependable fun as the council everyman, forced to confront his wistful longings. What Daniel really wants, like the siblings, is not to change but to belong.
In fact nearly everyone is on the oddball spectrum. It’s just that on the island everything is so weird that they all fit in (apart from Roz and her shiny suits council backup, when they eventually arrive – the triumph of the process over the principle). Sandy, Isla, Daniel, Calum, hell even the imaginary finman are entirely normal on Auk Isle.
Read my plot recap and “ending of” article here.
Watch the trailer for The Incomer: