Louis Paxton finds both comedy and loneliness in people who have spent too long apart from everyone else. We like the sympathy of his feature debut; the repeated reminders of how peculiar its islanders are need firmer handling.
Fi1m perspective
The reclusive siblings in The Incomer (2026) have habits that make a visitor uncomfortable, but Louis Paxton does not let the outsider settle into easy superiority. Daniel is allowed to be awkward too. That is the most promising choice in a likeable comedy whose affection for its characters sometimes produces more indulgence than laughs. We warmed to the film when the actors let the loneliness behind those habits show. Paxton, who also wrote it, gives the gentler exchanges enough attention for the siblings to matter beyond the next joke.
His route to that island ran through shorts, including Satan Has a Bushy Tail (2014) and Neville is Dead (2020), and television work such as Ladybaby (2021). He also directed episodes of Shetland and Wreck before making his first feature. The Incomer brings together his taste for surreal comedy, family tension and Scottish folklore. The move to feature length also exposes a weakness: he can establish an eccentricity more readily than he can leave it alone.
Paxton works with actors on movement as well as dialogue, and the attention to performance matters here. His preference for natural colours drawn from Scottish landscapes also suits a comedy whose isolation needs to feel real. Composer Tom Kingston’s music gives the island an uncomfortable sense of exposure. Editor Brian Philip Davis allows some comic exchanges to linger after their point has landed. A firmer cut would have helped, particularly where the film keeps reminding us how little the siblings know about life elsewhere.
Those jokes are the limit of our enthusiasm: they make convenient targets of people Paxton otherwise treats with sympathy. His interest in folklore and the friction between islanders and outsiders offers more promising material, especially when Daniel is not presumed to know better. There is enough kindness in the gentler scenes to keep the film from becoming merely a collection of odd habits. Try The Incomer for its three central performances, but do not expect every joke to earn the time it takes.
Biography
Louis Paxton is a Scottish writer and director. He grew up in Edinburgh and studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland before completing an MA in Directing at the National Film and Television School.
He has directed several short films, including the award-winning comedy Satan Has a Bushy Tail (2014). His television credits include episodes of the BBC series Shetland (2022) and Wreck (2024). Paxton’s feature debut The Incomer (2026), which he also wrote, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
