Glenn Kenny's review (at the New York Times) made me hope I was in for some Scottish quirk ala Bill Forsyth (That Sinking Feeling (1979), Gregory's Girl (1980), Comfort and Joy (1984)): perhaps something beautifully spooky like Andrina (1981) with maybe a mermaid or two like Local Hero (1983) and some of that ingenious muddling-forward that leaves everyone happy or at least bemused. And perhaps an era-defining soundtrack. But things aren't so original or gentle these days. In two sittings due to it being pro forma.
The setup has sister and brother Gayle Rankin and Grant O'Rourke as the last residents on remote "Auk Island" who the local council needs to move on for reasons withheld. (Apparently the film was actually shot in the Scottish Highlands and not on an island.) Domhnall Gleeson is dispatched and proves susceptible to their overtly weird charms, just as they are mesmerised by his recycling of recent popular culture. The plot goes entirely predictably and so it all comes down to how much you enjoy the colour.
The result put me most in mind of the less successful Kiwi comedies of the last decade (The Breaker Upperers (2018), Jojo Rabbit (2019)) with simplistic and not very sympathetic humour. The kooky "traditions" reminded me of Midsommar (2019). The references include The Arabians Nights, Trainspotting, Lord of the Rings, Hitchcock's The Birds. It is indeed fanfic. Harry Potter is conspicuous in its absence, presumably for legal reasons.
The soundtrack is often very obtrusive. The jittery camerawork was a chore.
Louis Paxton's highest-rated effort at IMDB is the short Neville is Dead (2020) which also stars Grant O'Rourke who co-wrote it. The novelty is that a young boy has an imaginary father who indulges his every wish. But the setup quickly devolves into a Wolverine-ish agonised invincibility that shows the boy to be a sadist. It seems that Paxton does not know how to steer his premises away from the derivative.
Adrian Horton at the Guardian: two stars. Aggressively quaint, "difficult to settle into for anyone with an aversion to twee."
