{"id":299016,"date":"2026-01-23T06:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T06:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299016\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T06:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T06:51:07","slug":"domhnall-gleeson-in-oddball-scottish-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299016\/","title":{"rendered":"Domhnall Gleeson in Oddball Scottish Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe British Isles can be treacherously vulnerable to twee overload in movies, though last year\u2019s The Ballad of Wallis Island<\/a> showed that it can be avoided, remaining a minor-key charmer even while it embraced every oddball eccentricity that writer-stars Tom Basden and Tim Key could concoct. Louis Paxton\u2019s The Incomer is not so resilient. Set on an even more remote island, this one off the northeast coast of Scotland, it centers on orphaned siblings who have grown up in isolation, without the comforts of modern mainland life \u2014 in thrall to mythical seagull legends that make this abrasively unfunny comedy strictly for the birds.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie\u2019s saving grace is Domhnall Gleeson<\/a> as Daniel, a gentle-natured mainlander working as a land recovery coordinator for the Northeastern Scottish Council. He\u2019s an awkward outsider in the office, his moral misgivings about foreclosures and evictions, turfing people out of their lifelong homes, leading his careerist boss Roz (Michelle Gomez) to treat him like a bleeding-heart fool. He\u2019s also \u201ca ginger\u201d with eczema, which doesn\u2019t exactly raise his stock.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Incomer\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tA shipwreck.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue<\/strong>: Sundance Film Festival (NEXT)
Cast<\/strong>: Domhnall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin, Grant O\u2019Rourke, Emun Elliott, Michelle Gomez, John Hannah
Director-screenwriter<\/strong>: Louis Paxton
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 42 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Daniel\u2019s empathy perceived as a weakness, Gleeson makes him the ideal mediator to communicate with two people positioned even further out on the margins. Calum (Emun Elliott), the thuggish staffer usually in charge of doorstep evictions, is out of commission due to some legal strife, so Roz sends Daniel in his place to a tiny island where brother and sister Sandy (Grant O\u2019Rourke) and Isla (Gayle Rankin<\/a>) \u2014 on-the-nose names that make them seem like they belong in Bikini Bottom with Spongebob \u2014 have lived alone since their parents passed 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

\n\tPaxton makes clever use of Selina Wagner\u2019s doodling animation to pencil in the island\u2019s ancestral folklore, frequently recounted by bossy Isla to dim bulb Sandy, when she\u2019s not caw-cawing at birds like a witch. The isle belongs to the gulls, and the siblings were taught as children to defend the birds\u2019 sanctuary from \u201cincomers,\u201d bringing with them the decadence and deceit of the mainland. Even so, Isla jealously guards the flotsam that drifts ashore, including a bendy sex toy that they think must be a weapon of some kind. Oh, the hilarity!<\/p>\n

\n\tThe brother and sister sustain themselves by digging up peat bog to burn in an ancient, dilapidated house with no utilities, and hunting seabirds. But it\u2019s a meager existence. \u201cI could go for some whale blubber right now,\u201d says hungry Sandy.<\/p>\n

\n\tProbably three readers at most will get this reference, but the establishing scenes on the island poked my repressed memory PTSD, hate-watching 1970s British children\u2019s fantasy TV series like Catweazle, a show about a creepy time-traveling wizard that dialed up the whimsy to 11. The movie also brought back those cringe-inducing scenes at the end of another drama set on a windblown Scottish island, The Outrun<\/a>, in which Saoirse Ronan \u201cconducts\u201d turbulent nature with an invisible baton.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Incomer follows similar cues. Rankin plays Isla as a shrill, feral version of Gaby Hoffman (no offense to the wonderful Gabs) given to physical violence, while O\u2019Rourke gets to play the sweet, constipated dolt, talking wistfully of the days when his \u201cbottom mess\u201d flowed more freely. I\u2019m serious. Isla also has frequent exchanges with a \u201cfin man\u201d (poor John Hannah), part of a mythical species of whiskered seal-like creatures that haunt the waters, bobbing up to lure land-dwellers into the murky depths.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of Isla and Sandy\u2019s preferred deterrents to keep incomers away is to dress up in home-made Wicker Man-type bird costumes and masks \u2014 which at least gets them out of their hideous knitwear. If their hostile squawking doesn\u2019t work, they take up primitive weapons. Daniel is greeted with a rock to the head and then dangled over a cliff. But he saves himself by telling Isla and Sandy he\u2019s a wizard (like Catweazle!), snapping a photo of them on his cellphone and threatening to use it to delete their souls.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat follows is a predictable d\u00e9tente during which Daniel paints a rosy picture of relocation to a comfortable home and easier lives on the mainland. Given that stories are Isla and Sandy\u2019s chief currency, he also entertains them by taking ownership of Tolkien and recasting himself as Gandalf.<\/p>\n

\n\tRomantic complications ensue when time spent with Daniel sparks impulses that the siblings don\u2019t know what to do with, beyond roping him into a gull initiation ceremony. And violence intrudes when Roz grows impatient for results and deploys hotheaded Calum to clean up the mess.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut this is designed to be a heartwarming comedy and debuting feature director Paxton is more assured with the outcome than he is about getting there. Some actual funny gags in the late action \u2014 a queer awakening avec bear; a hard headbutt when Daniel moves in for a kiss, confusing Isla \u2014 hint at what the story could have been with a less cutesy touch.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlmost in spite of its full-scale charm offensive \u2014 the score\u2019s plucky strings and horns really are a bit much \u2014 The Incomer acquires poignancy through Gleeson\u2019s playful, unassuming performance. Watching Daniel stand up to Roz is a victory for social justice in a rapacious modern world, while the fear of change embodied by Isla and Sandy ultimately is quite touching. While I found the movie a mostly annoying guano pileup, some no doubt will respond more receptively to its quirky exploration of human connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British Isles can be treacherously vulnerable to twee overload in movies, though last year\u2019s The Ballad of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[33770,18,117,6319,147982,19,17,327,16998,81227,16999,147983],"class_list":{"0":"post-299016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-domhnall-gleeson","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-festivals","12":"tag-gayle-rankin","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-sundance","17":"tag-sundance-2026","18":"tag-sundance-film-festival","19":"tag-sundance-film-festival-reviews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115943091905631559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}