The Incomer review Domhnall Gleeson tries to lift aggressively quirky comedy

"The siblings, a brother and sister, believed themselves to be descended from the gulls that peppered the island's scenic cliffs; they also believed, on some level, that they too were gulls or, at least, they acted like it, flapping and squawking about. Extra Geography review a sweet and spiky coming-of-age debut Debauched fairytales like these loom large over The Incomer, Scottish writer-director Louis Paxton's odd and aggressively quaint first feature, which asks a high conceptual buy-in of its audience."

"From the first shots of Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O'Rourke) caw-caw-ing like birds and beating sacks labeled incomer with clubs, Paxton commits to an askew, often alienating angle of humor quirky, at times juvenile, a touch dark, altogether difficult to settle into for anyone with an aversion to twee. It does not help that Isla and Sandy, left on the island by their deceased parents years earlier, act more like children than adults, brutish and blunt and stunted in ways more off-putting than"

"With no other human contact, the two believably live on the border of reality and myth, entertaining themselves with stories relayed to us in animated pencil sketches, as narrated by Isla of the gull ancestors and evil selkie-esque creatures that demand human sacrifice. (In a cringy flourish, said selkie also appears as a man in an obvious wetsuit and black contacts, beckoning Isla into the sea)."

Two siblings inhabit an abandoned Scottish isle, isolated from the modern world and convinced they are descended from gulls, behaving like birds and attacking labeled 'incomer' sacks. Their lives blur myth and reality as they tell stories of gull ancestors and selkie-esque monsters through animated pencil-story interludes. Director Louis Paxton leans into a quaint, off-kilter humor that can feel twee, juvenile, and alienating. The siblings’ arrested development and brutish behavior generate discomfort more than sympathy. A mainland councilor arrives to evict them, attempting to explain modern concepts like the internet, further exposing the siblings’ naïveté.

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