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\n\tIf Scotland\u2019s Bill Forsyth ever made a folk-horror comedy \u2014 and there\u2019s still time \u2014 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<\/a> probably won\u2019t 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<\/a>\u2019s World Dramatic Competition, where it fits nicely alongside the eccentric likes of Eagle vs Shark (2007) and Brian and Charles (2022).<\/p>\n \n\tIt also taps nicely into the psyche of British island comedies, from I Know Where I\u2019m Going to Whisky Galore! and last year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \n\tThey are Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O\u2019Rourke), a sister and brother who live alone on Gull Island, long abandoned \u2014 in an understated but somewhat dark, Cement Garden kind of way \u2014 by their parents. They argue all the time, with Isla taking the role of parent to her excitably na\u00efve sibling, notably when she confiscates from him a long rubber dildo that washes up on the shore (\u201cIt was bendy, and I liked it, and it was mine,\u201d Sandy pouts). Isla, meanwhile, harbors a dark fascination with the sea, notably a creepy merman (John Hannah<\/a> as you\u2019ve 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 \u201cthere\u2019s nary a problem that can\u2019t be solved by hoying a living person into the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n