How The Incomer Became The Best Modern Fairy Tale Of The Year
“This is a damn good time.”
When I first watched The Incomer, Louis Paxton’s latest feature starring Domhnall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin, and Grant O’Rourke, I had no idea how to describe it to my coworkers. “It’s kind of a comedy, but with major thriller bits, possibly even horror, and there are fantasy creatures,” I gushed, “and also it made me cry.” I had no idea what genre it was; I only knew it was excellent.
“I'd say it's like a folk comedy with elements of all the genres that Louis Paxton loves,” Grant O’Rourke tells Inverse. “It's the kind of stuff that makes you smile and makes you laugh and maybe scares you a little bit.”
The Incomer follows Daniel (Gleeson), a mild-mannered land recovery coordinator as he ventures out on an assignment to evict two siblings, Isla (Rankin) and Sandy (O’Rourke), who have lived an isolated life on an isle in the Scottish Highlands. What starts off as a dark comedy about scaring away a stranger quickly becomes a story of how storytelling and being open-minded can completely change how we define family.
Grant O’Rourke and Gayle Rankin play secluded siblings Sandy and Isla in The Incomer.
This story may be a three-hander between Daniel and the siblings, but if there is a star, it’s probably Sandy, who is the first one to really welcome Daniel and show him around the island. “You're playing someone who has been alone since he was 10 years old, so he hasn't had any kind of cultural references or community around him to show him how to be a man and what's expected of adults,” O’Rourke says. “It's actually quite nice because as an actor, all you're ever doing is try to play something truthfully, and there's not really any kind of deceit about Sandy. He's just really open and he means everything he says.”
That earnestness extends to every element of this story, from the meticulously created seagull costumes the siblings use to scare away strangers, to the running bit about a dildo that washed up on the shore. Daniel, a sci-fi and fantasy fan, tries to appeal to this nature by declaring himself a wizard at the beginning, and eventually “makes up” a story about a Hobbit named Frodo. For Gleeson, a veteran of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, this was an opportunity to play someone on the other side of that world.
“He seems to really, really like movies and all the rest of it,” he tells Inverse. “He seems to really love all of it, love the experience of the size of all those worlds.”
Which raises a bit of a canonical mystery: what would Daniel think of General Hux? “I've never thought of Daniel as being one of those permanently online critics of things. I think he just loves everything,” O’Rourke says.
“I think he just loves it,” Gleeson agrees. “I mean, he might be confused by General Hux. He might be like, ‘That guy looks exactly like me. I wonder what my mother was doing.’”
The Incomer blends Orkney folklore with modern-day storytelling in a fascinating way.
But the secret weapon of The Incomer is how it blurs the lines between fantasy and reality. Just as the siblings are completely unaware of the outside world, we are completely unaware of their life, so when Isla starts talking to the sea and meets one of the Finfolk — mystical sea-dwelling shapeshifters from Orkney folklore — it’s treated like something completely normal, just another member of this movie’s small cast.
Maybe that’s the best way to describe this movie: a modern, magical realist fairy tale that brings classic folklore to life without ever feeling outdated or preachy. It’s just a delightfully quirky, feel-good movie that defies categorization, and that’s all the description it needs.
“I think what you like in the film is what I like in the film,” Gleeson says. “It'll make you feel good, and I think that's what I'm looking for at the moment when I look for something new to watch, and I think this is a damn good time, so I hope people find it.”
