The Incomer: director Louis Paxton on his darkly funny tale of siblings, islands and isolation

From the pre-credit sequence in which island natives Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O’Rourke) stab sacks with ‘incomer’ written on them, we know Daniel is in for a rough time.

Once he sets foot on terra firma things don’t improve. A council worker from the mainland, Daniel (Domhnall Gleeson) warns the bickering siblings about their forthcoming eviction and gets a rock bounced off his head for his troubles. So begins The Incomer, an off-beat Scottish comedy of disconnection and fantasy, centring on a sister and brother who’ve lived a sheltered and bizarre life of isolation for several decades.

Writer-director Louis Paxton spent 28 days with his cast and crew in summer 2025 filming The Incomer in the dramatic surroundings of Caithness, north-east Scotland. This brooding, windswept place doubled for Orkney, the 70-island archipelago where Paxton spent part of his formative years. It’s the perfect spot for cliff-top wailing and – as in several of the film’s most bizarre moments – cosplaying as a seagull.

Paxton, who premiered his film at Sundance Film Festival this January, sat down to explain how spectacular Scottish topography, the films of Paul Thomas Anderson and even techno/chill-out stalwart Moby played a part in the creation of his debut feature.

Lou Thomas: What first inspired you to write the story?

Louis Paxton: My mum’s family is from Orkney, the islands north of Scotland. We’ve been going there since I was very young. I grew up every summer hanging around Neolithic dig sites and half-sunken shipwrecks; these beautiful, very remote islands that feel like you’re on the edge of the world.

I always wanted to make something up there, but I got really into reading about abandoned communities. There was St Kilda in the far west and various other islands in the Pentland Forest and around Scotland that used to be habited and eventually were abandoned. I became really interested in why people made that choice to leave, because I think for mainlanders it can often feel quite romantic. The reality, the more I read about it, was actually incredibly challenging, and a lot of these people were leaving for a better life.

The more I started to look into it, the more I saw the opportunity for this culture clash. And a way to comment on how we live now, and how connected or disconnected we are from other people, despite the fact that we’re surrounded by people all the time.

The film is very Scottish but without kilts and bagpipe clichés. Were there any specifically Scottish influences on the film?

Paxton: I love Scottish film and Scottish culture, but I love world cinema and American cinema too. I’ve grown up on a bit of everything. My two favourite Scottish films are Trainspotting [1996] and Orphans [1998]. I love the humour in them. We don’t make a huge amount of stuff in Scotland, but we have an incredible community of filmmakers and artists across music, film – loads of amazing people making work. But we’re not a massive country in that sense, so we can only produce so much. I always wanted to make films that were uniquely Scottish in their identity but that have a universal appeal as well.

What led you to create the more paranoid Isla dialogue and the more childlike Sandy’s lines in the way they ended up in the film?

Paxton: This sounds silly, because what happens in this film is so absurd in so many ways, but there had to be a level of realism to it. You had to believe these people lived on this island and had lived there since their parents died and they were essentially abandoned as children.

They’re stuck in this arrested development, which is partly why Sandy is very childlike. But in many ways Isla is quite childlike as well. She’s incredibly capable and has been caring for her brother and been the custodian of this island and her heritage. That all went into the dialogue.

I write comedy, I’ve written for television and other projects. A lot of the time you have cultural touchstones, references that everyone’s grown up with. What was tricky was that they’ve not grown up with any of that, so you can’t reference popular culture.

Isla has grown up consuming fairytales, so she’s got quite a poetic wee turn of phrase. The paranoia comes from her father, who, after the death of her mother, became increasingly insular, isolated and fearful of the world. To protect his children he told them lies about the mainland and about how, if you go there, there’s these people who might try to kill you.

There was something there that felt relevant about over the past decade or so how we can we can be quite fearful as a society and silo ourselves off to other cultures and other people. What I want to say with this film, among a few things, is the importance of connection. Paranoia is something that she has to overcome.

Were there any real-life people who inspired these characters?

Paxton: I’ve got an older sister. We grew up together and we used to fight terribly when we were young. We’re incredibly close now, and she’s a filmmaker as well. A lot of the tension between them was going back to when we were kids and how things would escalate so quickly because you really knew how to push each other’s buttons.

We found a lot through workshops we did early on. Movement workshops were excellent as part of our rehearsal process. Things like, “if you lived with someone for that long and you knew them that well, how would you communicate?” A lot would be non-verbal. You’d have this shorthand.

It’s a difficult relationship because Isla and Sandy are brother and sister, but Isla has essentially raised him, because Sandy’s not that capable in lots of ways. She’s a mother in a way.

Domhnall Gleeson’s part is initially like the control in a science experiment, but he allows his weird to come out. How much coaxing did he need for that?

Paxton: Not much. That’s maybe what attracted him to it. He brought so much more than what Daniel was on the page. I loved all the characters in it, but I can also see Isla, Sandy are – from the start – these really in-your-face, absorbed characters. For an actor, compared to that, Daniel might not seem like there’s as much to play with. But he elevated it and was totally unfazed by dressing up in a bird costume and dancing on a cliff. 

Did you have any cinematic storytelling influences while you were making the film?

Paxton: I like mixing genres. This is a comedy with drama, but there’s also fantasy to it. I remember watching Hunt for the Wilderpeople [2016] and Boy [2010], Taika Waititi’s early work. I was struck how he had such a strong identity in what he made. Those films were so accessible. There’s a playful way he balances comedy and drama.

I also grew up with Tim Burton – Edward Scissorhands [1990] and Beetlejuice [1988] – and the way he would weave fantasy and fairytale into his stories, but they still had a real edge to them. A lot of kids films I watched when I was growing up had a darkness to them, which I really liked.

How did you create the film’s visual identity?

Paxton: We looked at period dramas, because in many ways it was a period film on this island. They don’t have electricity, so it’s a lot of natural light and lamplight. And so we were looking at things like There Will Be Blood [2007], which are wildly different. Also, we didn’t want to just shoot blind coverage, so it was always this toss-up between needing coverage to control the comedy of the scene but can we push things as well: be more cinematic and play more and make fewer shots work harder.

We looked up a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson and some [Quentin] Tarantino stuff, really thinking about how people expect comedy to be bright and poppy. We wanted to make something that felt like the best jokes are told with a straight face. So much of this is so absurd that I think if we were too poppy with it, it might feel a bit too much.

I think it makes it funnier that we have quite a sober cinematic approach. We were really particular about our colour palette, which was all drawn from the very natural tones of Caithness – the moss, the ocean, the sky and the rock, this ochre lichen that you get everywhere – coupled with the really bright colours of the mainland with this red coat and then the dildo, which is a big part of it as well.

Moby is an executive producer on the film. How did he contribute?

Paxton: He has a production company called Little Walnut with Lindsay Hicks, and they are executive producers on this and came on quite early when we were looking for financiers. From the first meeting we had, they really got the script and wanted to help us make it. He’s an animal rights activist and there’s an element of veganism in this. There was a part of me that wondered if that was something connected to that. There was no place for his music, otherwise I would have definitely tried to tap him up.

The Incomer, backed by the BFI Filmmaking Fund, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2026.