If Scotland’s Bill Forsyth ever made a folk-horror comedy — and there’s still time — it would look something like The Inccomer, a riff on his enduring 1983 classic Local Hero populated with characters that are clearly inspired by British comedy legends The League of Gentlemen, whose most famous duo, Tubbs and Edward, fiercely guard their remote grocery store, a local shop for local people. If these references mean nothing to you, then The Incomer probably won’t either, since, if we take Yorgos Lanthimos as the surreal master of cranking things up to 11, its mild weirdness only goes up to about five or six, seven tops. It does, however, fill a traditional spot in Sundance’s World Dramatic Competition, where it fits nicely alongside the eccentric likes of Eagle vs Shark (2007) and Brian and Charles (2022).

It also taps nicely into the psyche of British island comedies, from I Know Where I’m Going to Whisky Galore! and last year’s The Ballad of Wallis Island, which together form a sort of lo-fi, provincial repudiation of the existential American road movie. Crucially, it also takes a big bag of inspiration from The Wicker Man and its sinister subversion of unworldly, soft-headed rural stereotypes. The characters here, though, are nowhere near so smart as those conniving pagans and can only dream of outwitting the sophisticated folk from the mainland, coming there with their talk of cake, and comfy chairs, and their lies.

They are Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O’Rourke), a sister and brother who live alone on Gull Island, long abandoned — in an understated but somewhat dark, Cement Garden kind of way — by their parents. They argue all the time, with Isla taking the role of parent to her excitably naïve sibling, notably when she confiscates from him a long rubber dildo that washes up on the shore (“It was bendy, and I liked it, and it was mine,” Sandy pouts). Isla, meanwhile, harbors a dark fascination with the sea, notably a creepy merman (John Hannah as you’ve never seen him before) who tries to lure her into joining him down into the depths. Worryingly, Isla actually might do so, since she truly believes that “there’s nary a problem that can’t be solved by hoying a living person into the sea.”

This theory is put to the test when a stranger arrives — a fish out of water, to invoke an oft-used but, here, very appropriate metaphor. Daniel (Domhnall Gleeson), initially seen only in his sterile office environment on the mainland, is a nerdy land recovery coordinator being sent by his intimidating boss Rose (Michelle Gomez) to evict the pair, so that the island can become a wildlife sanctuary (quite a noble purpose, actually, in spite of the way Rose goes about it). Inevitably, in a film where no wheel really goes unreinvented, the earnestly nerdy Daniel, who collects fantasy action figures and even puts them on his desk, falls under their spell. Likewise, they fall under his, too, with his rollicking but, to us, suspiciously Tolkienesque story The Lord of the Local Authority.

Clearly, push will have to come to shove, as a result, and the final third of the film isn’t quite so satisfying, with increasingly over-the-top flex from Rose as the Donald Trump of Gull Island as we wonder how writer-director Louis Paxton, making his feature debut, will emerge from the corner that he’s painted himself into. Against the odds, though, and largely thanks to the core trio, The Incomer pulls together, finally addressing the story’s dark well of sadness and ending on an upbeat yet surprisingly mature and even emotional note that absolves the film for most — if not all — of its frequent forays into silliness.

Title: The Incomer
Festival: Sundance (World Dramatic Competition)
Director-screenwriter: Louis Paxton
Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin, Grant O’Rourke, Michelle Gomez, John Hannah
Sales agent: Charades
Running time: 1 hr 41 mins