- TIFF 2026: A Canadian Critic Looks At This Year’s Fest (September 23, 2026)
The 51st Toronto International Film Festival has wrapped, the culmination of eleven days showcasing hundreds of films, with thousands of patrons experiencing some of the best (and worst) of world cinema in 2026. A half million people came down to King Street on the opening weekend as part of the festival’s activation, taking in food stalls, art installations, and simply wandering the area trying to capture the vibe of the event.
This year marks another major transition for the festival, with their market endeavour taking over the convention centre just south of the TIFF Lightbox central venue. With tens of millions in funding, this market is a direct attempt to not only compete with the likes of Cannes, Berlin, the AFM and other major players on the industry side, but also to maximize the incubation of future projects that when birthed at this festival may return as part of the programming slate.
Putting this part of the event together has been a major endeavour, and it seems to have directly affected the way that screenings operated both for press/industry badge holders and the public alike. The screening schedule, always requiring a delicate balancing act to ensure ease of operation for theatre staff as well as the ability to see as many titles as possible, has never been more egregiously prepared. Almost two dozen titles would be stacked at the same time with giant gaps later in the day, with the opening days more crammed than ever, further making it seem that TIFF is really an opening weekend-only festival in all but name, especially when it comes to the major titles that are garnering international attention.
That said, there’s still plenty to celebrate about what was showcased, and there were direct improvements after the debacles of the last few years. Avi Nesher returned to TIFF for the fifth time with “Our Loves,” and during my conversation with the filmmaker he talked at length about what it meant to showcase his film here in the city, as well as a genuine desire for these cinematic spaces to be open to voices of all kinds. Hanaël El Yousfi’s “Daughters of Abraham” deftly tackled cultural divides with this gorgeously realized drama. Similarly, the Canadian/Ukrainian production “The Betrayers” was a hidden gem, tackling moral complexity and human frailty in fascinating ways, all enwrapped in the thorniest of issues including the Russian/Ukrainian conflict, the lingering scars of Soviet-era injustice, and the sordid vagaries of the Israeli political system.
TIFF did manage to snag a slew of World Premieres that were worthy of celebration, including the People’s Choice Runner-Up “I Play Rocky”. An ebullient telling of the story of Sly Stallone’s breakout film anchored by an astonishing take by relative newcomer Anthony Ippolito, the film had audiences cheering. Peter Farrelly garnered a Best Picture Academy Award after debuting “Green Book” here back in 2018, and Toronto may well be another launching pad for more Oscar glory.
TIFF Opening Gala “Being Heumann” by “CODA” helmer Sian Heder got plenty of plaudits, as did Bassam Tariq “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” and its standout performance by Mahershala Ali. “Closing Night” didn’t get as much love as I think it deserved, and the exceptional performances by the ensemble led by Naomi Watts and Sarah Paulson provided one of this year’s highlights.
Yet it was the Cannes titles like “Club Kid,” and especially the People’s Choice Winner “La Bola Negra,” that found their true mojo here. Neither film took top prize in Cannes, but local audiences deeply embraced both films, with A24’s multi-million-dollar gamble proving to be a wise one with the former, and the latter establishing itself as a front runner from NEON for this year’s Best pic race.
Other exceptional Canadian debuts included the Telluride-premiering “Elsinore” and “Everest: The Other Side.” The Andrew Scott drama took the International People’s Choice Award (the juggling of math to move “La Bola Negra” to the main slate leaving this film to triumph), and I was enthralled by a Shakespeare film by people that actually read the play and deeply understood its meaning. “Everest,” meanwhile, may in fact trump the sublime “Free Solo” by the simple fact that Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s documentary finally asks the most profound questions: should this film itself exist, should these adventures continue, and is the cost of capturing these incredible images worth the human cost? Screened on the giant IMAX screen, this was one of those gloriously cinematic experiences with deeper philosophical undertones that one craves from such an event.
Another Telluride title, “The Debut,” was absolutely one of the best to play here, and audiences lapped it up. Jesse Eisenberg’s wonderful ode to artistry, with mid-film applause-generating takes by Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti, is heightened by the film’s most glorious element, the perfectly pitched score by the writer/director/producer/ensemble star himself. In a casual conversation with Eisenberg, we discussed the miraculous music from Christopher Guest’s “A Mighty Wind” as an influence, his glorious use of suspended chords on the eminently hummable tunes, and how easily the show-within-the-movie could open without changing a note on Broadway. I’m desperate for the soundtrack to be released on vinyl to join other masterworks that toe the fine line between clever and stupid such as “Walk the Line,” “Original Cast Album: Co-Op” and John Mulaney’s “The Snack Lunch Bunch.”
Documentaries are a highlight of any TIFF, and this year saw some absolute stunners. “Rescue,” tackling the migration crisis on the Mediterranean, is a stunner, and Sine Plambech’s gorgeously rendered and deeply nuanced take easily one of the best of the year. Doc winner “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been” is a sympathetic and musically sublime portrait of this legendary figure, a more focussed dive into the artist’s life and career following the Oscar-winning success of Morgan Neville’s shatteringly excellent “20 Feet from Stardom”. “Re/pair” is a fascinating film about the need for hard conversations, while “Black Sunflowers” showcases the tumultuous changes within Ukrainian youth culture during a time of war.
“Neil Peart: No One’s Disciple” dives into the musicianship of the late-Rush drummer in exemplary ways through the use of some of his friends behind the kit, while Joss Crowley’s “Pretenders” doc manages to tease from the band’s mercurial lead singer nuggets from Chrissie Hynde’s past that will sate fans of this iconic band.
There was no work that had a bigger divide between the lackluster programme description and the resulting film than Michael Maxxis’ magnificent “Gail”. Tracing a tour run by a Yonkers-based superfan obsessed with Canuck alt-rockers Our Lady Peace, this exquisite rumination on the highs and lows of audience obsessions results in a highly specific yet profoundly universal film that’s simultaneously hilarious and chilling. I dubbed it the “‘Grey Gardens’ of music docs,” and remain astonished about just how well it navigates the many pitfalls that stood in the way of its success.
Then there’s Matthew Rankin’s ribald, ridiculous, revelatory “Ladies and Gentlemen…Brian Mulroney.” The winner of the Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award, I had little faith this psychotronic political screed would work with the youths, many of whom were born well after the former Prime Minster held office, but I should have had more faith in this filmmaker’s brilliance. The mindbending fragmentation of actual historical elements merged into a handcrafted animated assault on the senses is as silly as its is sublime, yet again establishing the singular voice of this most remarkable of artists. Simply put, this film illustrates the greatness of my nation in all its nonsensical beauty and contradictions in way few works of art have ever been able to muster.
Changes made by the Academy have bolstered one section of TIFF to truly international importance, and that’s the juried Platform section. Meant to highlight films without distribution, since its inception the juried prize has already been an also-ran to the increasing number of People’s Choice winners. This year, however, TIFF joins the other members of the “Big 6” (Busan, Cannes, Sundance, Berlin, Venice) to have its prize mean automatic acceptance for any non-English winner to be eligible for Best International Feature consideration. For politically challenging films this is a boon, and this year’s winner, Theja Rio’s haunting “Angh,” set on the Indian/Burmese border, is the perfect example of a work that will greatly benefit from this bypassing of restrictive national nominating committees.
In terms of misfires, there were, of course, a few, but none compared to the vomitous “The Last Photographer” by Zack Snyder, truly one of the worst films I’ve seen showcased in such a major venue as I’ve experienced in three decades of attending this festival. My cry of “Apocalypse No!” resulted in the usual level of death threats and other nonsense on social media from the cultish fans of the filmmaker (one who I freely have championed in the past when deserved) yet I worry more that my describing just how abysmal the film is the more that certain filmgoers will masochistically seek it out rather than those receiving glowing praise above.
Time will tell if TIFF’s standing continues to slide as Venice, Telluride and a rising NYFF continue to drain some of its lustre. Its powerful role as the prime launching pad for the great films of the year has certainly abated, but there are still few events on the planet that come close to this range of cinematic expression gathered in one place open to the public to explore. The past few years have seen quite a few missteps, be they logistic or artistic, and that downward trend remains concerning. Yet there were still more than a few moments of pure joy to be experienced in 2026.
Toronto remains firmly in the conversation among the most important film showcases on the planet, and we can only hope that next year sees continued improvement, that the market mayhem is tamed, and that a redoubling of efforts is made to ensure that this storied festival continues to thrive well into its second half-century.
- TIFF 2026: The Assassin(s), Diary of a Mad Old Man, It’s My Time (September 23, 2026)
Fellow critic Cortlyn Kelly noted in her Gala Presentations dispatch an unexpected thematic arc of intergenerational, interpersonal conflict. The same could apply in to the three Gala films covered here: “The Assassin(s),” “Diary of an Old Man,” and “It’s My Time.” And yet there’s another narrative spine that connects them: these are projects that challenge our obsession with easy narratives, encouraging us not to be placated by the promise of easy answers. Sometimes, the bravest thing we can do is look at a tidy resolution and let our curiosity be the loose thread that unspools manufactured tidiness.
Director Hur Jin-ho delivered one of the best domestic thrillers of the past year with “A Normal Family,” and he applies the same skill of mining enjoyment from relational discord with his political thriller, “The Assassin(s).” It struggles to balance the sincerity of the story it’s trying to tell with its occasional slapstick elements, which can make it feel disjointed tonally. Still, this is a rivetingly told film about a part of Korean history that is deserving of the craft and care Hur and his collaborators have put forth. In clever and ironic fashion, by honing in on the localized elements of this story, it enables viewers to see its universal saliency: how this story about freedom of the press, the control of information by those in power, and the commitment to the truth are realities, struggles, and battles that we still have to contend with. More often than not, we’re living the histories we watch unfold on screen.
Even at over two hours, Hur wastes no time throwing viewers in the midst of the action. In 1974, South Korean prime minister Park Chung-hee narrowly survived an assassination attempt, but it led to the death of the first lady, Yuk Young-soo, and a young bystander. The security forces quickly capture and arrest Mun Se-gwang, a Korean Japanese man whose radical Maoist beliefs make him an easy scapegoat. But the more journalists in the Dong-sung Daily, such as Jae-hwan (Park Hae-il), and police detectives like Cheol-goo (Yoo Hai-jin), look closely at the situation, the more things do not add up. Six shots were fired while Mun’s pistol only carried five bullets; it is the type of discrepancy most might ignore for the sake of quick justice, but it is the journalists’ questioning that reveals a much larger conspiracy at hand.
It’s encouraging to see the vocation of journalism be framed with the reverence that it has in Hur’s film. It leads to some grandiloquent speeches, such as when editor Kim Jae-hwan impassionately says, “We also declare that the free press is the most fundamental social function to develop a free function, thus it should not be oppressed by any reason,” but in a world of muddled and mixed messaging, there is merit to stating your thesis so clearly. It is not all pontification though, as Hur delights in shifting the puzzle pieces into place for a grand reveal that feels both surprising and appointed all at once. The deeper the journalists dig, the more violent the opposition from those in power, which only bolsters their work. This creates a natural escalation of the film’s narrative, where Hur gets to flex his skills for directing close-quarters, period-accurate action scenes. Like the best journalistic story, he’s able to give us all the information we need while making the presentation of the narrative rousing and enthralling in its own right.
It might be easier to describe the freaky things that you do not see on screen in Wayne Wang’s “Diary of a Mad Old Man,” but do not mistake that as an admission that the film exists solely to titillate. While the film starts with a man, Utsugi (Lily Franky), masturbating and being unsuccessful at climaxing, and somewhere in between, he fantasizes about licking his daughter-in-law’s feet and having an eel inserted into him (not necessarily in that order), it uses its taboo exploration of sexuality to point at how society is ill-equipped for the reality that yes, the elderly have desires too. Based on Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s novel, Wang spins an intricate, challenging tale about what it means to still dream even when your body fails you, and that we push people towards an early grave the moment we put stipulations on what they can and cannot yearn for.
Seen through this lens, introducing viewers to Utsugi via a sequence of failed masturbation is a perfect encapsulation of the protagonist’s central struggle: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Right before his 69th (the entendres write themselves), Utsugi suffers a stroke that paralyzes his entire left side. The physical world seems to be closing in on him, limiting his options, and so Utsugi retreats to the only domain left: his mind. Indeed, there is nothing more terrifying than being trapped in a body you don’t recognize. His daughter-in-law, Susu (Fan Bingbing), stays behind to care for him while the rest of the family goes on vacation. He yearns for her, and for a while it seems that she returns his affections, although Wang keeps it ambiguous till a later reveal of whether their interactions are genuine or just filtered through Utsugi’s lust.
Curiously, the film I was left thinking about the most was Ti West’s “X,” which was part of a string of horror films that could chalk up their horrors to: “Isn’t it gross when old people want to have sex?” By framing the aging body as a creature of horror, it stigmatizes the idea that the elderly still have vibrant, pulsating desires. The film also challenges how society has propped up sexual experience and being desirable as being key to one’s identity. What does that mean for people like Utsugi, who is past his prime of desirability? Is he expected to simply not long for intimacy anymore? These questions do not justify the uncomfortable territory “Diary of an Old Man” steps into at times–after all, it is, at the end of the day, crudely reduced to a story of a man leering after his own daughter–in–law– but Wang’s warm lens and thoughtful framing of Utsugi are worth praising for taking a story that could have been just sickening and instead finding something touching and moving in all of its weirdness.
Director Bai Xue directs a different story on this similar idea of performing past one’s prime with her crowd-pleasing gem, “It’s My Time,” which is noteworthy purely for the fact that it finds a way to make solving Rubik’s cubes not only cinematic but exciting. It takes the straitjacket of a classic underdog sports story and applies it seriously to a supposedly stationary sport that reveals itself to be surprisingly kinetic. It helps to have a performer like Michelle Yeoh who commits wholeheartedly to the film’s premise and melodrama; you find yourself laughing with the characters and the drama that unfolds when a story like this could have easily served laughs by just poking fun at itself.
Xue knows that there are few more salient cinematic pleasures in life than seeing multi-generational protagonists fight and then make up, and she finds a worthy pairing to Yeoh in Liu Haoran. Haoran plays a former Rubik’s Cube champion who takes on a role as an instructor at a nursing home in order to pay off his debts. He tries to just coast, but his slacker pedagogy is quickly challenged by Yeoh’s Zhao Yanhong, an attendee who quickly proves herself to be a prodigy. The two strike up a partnership and Zhao prepares herself to compete for the World Cubing Championship.
As with any sports story, though, the sport is always secondary to what it unearths, and Zhao knows that her newfound enthusiasm for this sport is a way for her to not deal with her own interpersonal issues. It is easier to solve a problem where you know what the answer looks like even if the road to get there is windy. Xue finds ways to constantly make the actual solving of the cube feel dynamic, incorporating a mix of first-person POVs from the cube’s perspective and relying on quick editing to give a sense of urgency. The film is a powerful reminder that there’s never too late to start a new passion and that sometimes the most innocuous of hobbies can be an entrypoint for knowing ourselves better.
- Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson Are Just Alright, Alright, Alright in Apple TV’s “Brothers” (September 23, 2026)
If you were to ask A-list movie stars (and “True Detective” co-stars) Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, they’re close enough to be brothers. So close, in fact, that they’ve long stoked a theory that they might be biological siblings in real life; after all, McConaughey’s mother has alleged to be intimate with Harrelson’s dad around the time baby Matthew was conceived. This kind of tall tale is the stuff of pop culture mythmaking, stoked, of course, by the sort of fan who simply likes the symmetry of Hollywood’s favorite sons of the South being as close in real life as they are on screen. But that kind of rumor doesn’t always translate into sizzling television, as the Apple TV vanity project “Brothers” bears out.
Created by “Schitt’s Creek” writer David West Read (and taken over by comedy vet Lee Eisenberg halfway through production; always a good sign), “Brothers” plops the two Oscar-caliber movie stars (though McConaughey teases Woody that he’s never won one) into a sunny, “Grace and Frankie”-style streaming sitcom format in which the two play fictionalized versions of themselves. The broad strokes seem to fit, at least insofar as we know the Hollywoodized myths of the men: McConaughey is an enigmatic, wily philosopher-king who pontificates just like he does in those Lincoln ads, while Harrelson is a self-described anarchist who prides himself on his laid-back, weed-and-sandals way of life.
Despite this, the two are lifelong best friends, to the point where, when Woody’s oldest daughter Olive (Highdee Kuan) calls off her engagement, he decides to pack the whole fam—including Olive, wife Joy (Brittany Ishibashi), and adoptive kids Kai (Oona Yaffe) and Clara (Ella Grace Helton)—into their converted RV and pull up at the McConaughey’s palatial Hollywood estate for an extended spell. Just in time, too, to help stoke Mac’s ambitions of running for governor of Texas, just as he’s mourning the recent loss of his father.
It’s there, though, that Ma Mac (Holland Taylor), Matthew’s stylish, ornery grandma, lets slip to Woody the factoid that kicked off this whole show in the first place: He and Mac might be brothers. (Each episode kicks off with the ever-so-clever tagline “Based on a True Rumor.”)
From there, though, “Brothers” plays out largely like a big-budget streaming edition of “Full House,” with a few splashes of Hollywood metacommentary bubbling in there. To their credit, McConaughey and Harrelson’s real-life chemistry translates nicely here to the show’s conceit: Put the two of them in a scene together, and they can make the tritest sitcom concept sing. Problem is, much of the show involves throwing them into the hokiest scenarios a million sitcoms have trod before. Oh no, they forgot to get their wives something on Valentine’s Day! Gee, how will Mac help his sensitive, therapized son Wyatt (Nolan Almeida) through his first high school dance?
It doesn’t help, of course, that the rest of the family struggles to make much of an impression. The youngest kids, Clara and Mac’s son River (Noah Carganilla), get little to do besides say the occasional darndest thing, and the older kids get wrapped up in samey sitcom drama (including a budding romance between Kai and Wyatt, whose relationship throws a wrinkle into the series’ yearning to put Woody and Mac under the same family tree). Taylor, though, is always a delight to watch, even if she only gets one note to play for much of the show. The real standouts, though, come from guest players like Lisa Gilroy (“Super Troopers 3“) who plays Mac’s bizarre, shark-like campaign manager, or Skyler Gisondo as a late-in-show addition who, like his character in “The Righteous Gemstones,” is an outsider desperate to make inroads with the Harrelson family.
Watching “Brothers” can be a frustrating experience, as this obviously overqualified cast pinballs from one hokey scenario to the next. It’s hard not to watch scenes where McConaughey and Harrelson step in dog poop and think, “Aren’t these guys movie stars?” And yet, scenes are leavened by the occasional solid dig at these two guys’ inflated egos, like Harrelson’s militant veganism or McConaughey’s faux-folksy demeanor running into the real questions of an ordinary person. But as the series progresses, the mileage starts to run out on these self-effacing prods, especially once we start trotting out the Wooderson haircut and the literal car from “Dazed and Confused.” (I’m honestly shocked we get no “Cheers” references, considering this is Harrelson’s return to sitcoms.)
Eisenberg is old hat in this kind of comic series, and it shows in some of “its “Brothers”‘ more entertaining moments. But it feels like West Read had something more “Schitt”-y in mind before he was replaced: caustic, bittersweet, something that deflated the sky-high personas of two of Hollywood’s most reliable stars. Here, that’s been softened to something fuzzier and more palatable, a lack of edge that feels antithetical to the kinds of projects both actors tend to take. Time may be a flat circle, but “Brothers” is just flat.
Full season screened for review. New episodes air weekly on Apple TV.
- Fantastic Fest 2026: Into the Sky, Play House, Posthumous (September 22, 2026)
There’s an amazing bit of trivia about how there are so many possible shuffles of a deck of cards that it’s almost certain that every single one ever shuffled has been as distinct as a snowflake. I thought of this when considering the panoply of meet-cutes in cinema history: There’s always a new one for some writer to devise. The meet-cute in writer/director duo Evan Buxbaum & Drew Mylrea’s “Into the Sky” is certainly not one I’ve seen before: A man meets the woman living in his house after being returned from his abduction by aliens. Sci-fi-rom-com “Into the Sky” is a quirky, funny movie, one that’s buoyed greatly by a likable cast. Fantastic Fest was full of doom and gloom this year that reflected the general anxiety of the world in 2026; this was a wonderful reprieve from all the terror.
The naked man covered in blue goop who falls back into his life after being away long enough that his divorcing wife rented out their house? It’s poor Bobby (Sam Richardson), a guy who apparently has become the favorite target of some experimenting interstellar visitors. We slowly learn that his alleged abductions actually led to hospitalization, and there’s an interesting mystery for a bit as to whether or not Bobby should be taken seriously at all. Is he really being taken into the sky or is he mentally falling apart under the weight of a broken relationship?
Helping him answer these questions are his tenant Nico (Sofia Black-D’Elia) and another alien abductee named Jaden (David Cross). Nico agrees to help Bobby find his ex-wife if he helps her through helping plan and execute her brother’s wedding. One of the reasons that “Into the Sky” works is that Buxbaum & Mylrea also worked from a traditional rom-com formula: New guy helps woman find her confidence by being the decent dude by her side. It just happens to possibly be about the end of the world.
The whimsy of “Into the Sky” can sometimes feel a little forced and the set-ups a tad sitcomish, but Buxbaum & Mylrea are assisted greatly by their excellent cast. Richardson makes for a great everyman, Black-D’Elia is effortlessly charming, and Cross is having a blast as the obvious comic relief. In the end, it’s not a perfect comedy, but a nice reminder that a fest like Fantastic doesn’t always have to be about body horror and the end of the world.
The very existence of Nicolas Curcio’s “Play House” is one of the coolest things about Fantastic Fest 2026. The film is the result of a new annual project called “Fantastic Pitches,” wherein ambitious creators use an event on the fest weekend to pitch their films, and a winner is chosen for production, with the requirement that it’s done and ready to premiere the next year. 2025’s winner was this clever ghost story that centers lost media, and the contest was so successful that two of the runner-ups are also currently in production. The idea that a fest that’s built its reputation on the work of indie filmmakers could be the launchpad to create indie movies itself? Very cool.
And it helps that Curcio’s debut is quite good, even great for about an hour. Curcio understands the pull of found footage as message boards have been flooded with people looking for some curiosity they remember from their childhood or stumbling upon some old recording that looks downright haunted. That’s what happens to Elliot (Will Harrison), who finds a bag of VHS tapes in the basement of a house that’s he just bought for renovation, kinda hoping that the “grown-up” decision will bring his ex Cath (Jessica Sula) back to their relationship. When he pops in a tape with his buddy Alden (Jordan Gonzalez), he sees grainy footage of an old children’s TV show hosted by Mr. Morton (James Urbaniak). The only person on screen, Morton interacts with puppets that look like monsters who are being voiced by what sounds like terrified, possibly crying children. It’s a chilling creation, the kind of stuff that actually gets under your skin while watching it.
Elliot and Alden scour the internet for information about Mr. Morton, but no one remembers the show, which leads them to the terrifying, inevitable conclusion: These were home movies. While Alden suggests they go to the authorities, Elliot insists that they don’t actually have any footage of a crime yet, and there’s an interesting subtext in how he ignores what actually might literally be buried in his new basement as the situation with Cath improves. He’s willing to repress to “play house” with his girlfriend.
The first hour of “Play House” is so strong that the ways in which it kinda falls apart in the third act are all the more disappointing. It’s one of those classic projects wherein the questions or the mysteries are always more interesting than the resolutions, but there’s still so much to admire here, especially given the film’s unique origins. Strong production design, incredibly believable lo-fi VHS cinematography, and even a few impressive ghost story beats work alongside uniformly solid performances. That none of this existed without a pitch contest in an Austin bar is remarkable, and indicative of the heights to which this new pipeline could rise.
VHS tapes are also centered in Josh Tanner’s “Posthumous,” a movie that feels deeply inspired by the “Insidious” franchise and how it details how ordinary households can become portals to supernatural worlds. This Aussie flick ultimately feels too reliant on manufactured emotion and flat dialogue to strike the emotional chords it intends to hit, leaving viewers more curious about how it’s going to end than truly engaged in its storytelling. It’s too slow and too devoid of cinematic personality (other than a fantastic bit of haunted creature design) to stand out in a crowded Fantastic Fest lineup.
Sophie Lowe plays Zoe, who has come home for her 30th birthday, which happens to be the same age her mother was when she died in childbirth. Zoe’s mom was dying while she was pregnant, and so she made VHS tapes for her unborn child to watch on every birthday. This will be the last, and it will open doors to what really happened to mom and how the evil that took her might still be around today.
So much of “Posthumous” works on Zoe finding the right tape or having the right conversation with her distant dad or spooky neighbor at just the right time that it drains its protagonist of too much agency. Lowe is fine at the big emotional beats, but they feel shoehorned into a cluttered bit of supernatural mystery-solving as to the Lovecraftian threat in this corner of Australia. There’s also just not enough effective atmosphere here to bring us into Zoe’s story. We always feel like we’re watching and not feeling or dreading.
Worst of all, “Posthumous” runs close to two hours, which leads to a film that drags instead of building to its action-packed, almost sci-fi conclusion. There are interesting themes, ideas, and bits of filmmaking here, but they’re buried in so much that doesn’t connect that it feels like work to unpack them.
- The Heart at the Center Of It: Domhnall Gleeson on “The Incomer” (September 22, 2026)
“The Incomer” is first-time writer/director Louis Paxton’s film about a brother and sister who are the only residents of an isolated island, the only home they have ever known. Domhnall Gleeson plays Daniel, the shy, awkward bureaucrat sent to evict them.
In an interview with RogerEbert.com, Gleeson talked about finding the right tone for the story, creating one of the movie’s best scenes, an energetic enactment of “Lord of the Rings” fan fiction, and being directed by Taylor Swift in the “Opalite” video. “The Incomer” opens in theaters on September 25.
As I watched this movie, I couldn’t help thinking that you could make this setup work as a broad comedy, a horror movie, an adventure, or a satire. It has some elements of all of them but retains a remarkably consistent, if unusual and very singular, tone. How did you maintain that?
It’s such a really interesting combination of things that could feel disparate and messy. But the person leading the charge did know exactly what they were doing. Louis is a very unusual filmmaker, never mind a first-time filmmaker, in that he was able to bring all those things together, and the tone was never in question. That’s what I loved about it, the way it brought all those things together in the script. The reason I hopped on to do the film was that, tonally, it knew itself so well in the script.
How would you define the tone?
It is really funny. It’s very heartfelt. There are moments in it that are almost horror-like, “The Wicker Man” scary stuff. And then there were bits of pretty broad comedy. But to me, it’s the heart at the center of it that matters most. And that’s the thing that comes through the most. If you ask me to describe it in one sentence, rather than a paragraph, I would really struggle. It’s itself, and that’s what I like about it is itself.
You have demonstrated a remarkable facility with accents in your career. How did you work on the Scottish accent for this character?
There are few things scarier than turning up to set in Scotland with an almost completely Scottish crew, Scottish filmmakers, Scottish cast. The moment you break out your Scottish accent on set is a very scary moment. But thank God it seems to have gone well. The feedback has been pretty good. I worked very hard on it with a wonderful dialect coach. I based it on a couple of people, including our second AD. He had a wonderful voice, and when I met him, I was like, “Oh, I might steal some of him for the accent as well.”
Do you have a phrase that you use to get yourself into it?
Oh, I did, and I can’t say it. It had a couple of curse words in it, but it got me back pretty quickly. It was one of those great curse words that have a lot of vowels in it.
One of the highlights of the movie for me was the Lord Of The Rings-infused story you told the other characters. It’s really a turning point for your character. I had the impression, watching it, that your character hadn’t really talked to anybody in a long time, and we really see him open up.
He’s so buttoned up. He’s so much on the back foot. He’s so interior, and you can see that he wants to connect with people, but he struggles. We see that he believes, and I think he’s right, that people consider him a bit of a weirdo on the mainland. And this is the first time he lets all of it out. And it’s through storytelling.
That’s what we all do as actors, as directors, as everything. Storytelling is what we’re there for. Daniel just gets to go into his imagination. I imagined that’s who he was when he was five years old, before the world taught him to be embarrassed about himself or to hide pieces of himself away. So I just went back to my five-year-old self and how exciting it is when a kid is trying to tell you a story. I thought of my nephews and the way they tell stories.
The physicality of it was something we hadn’t seen from Daniel before. I just love the way he threw himself into it as though he’d been holding on to that moment for his whole life and was so excited to finally have an audience.
He finally has an audience. That’s exactly it. People are actively listening to him, and he has them hanging on his every word. And I remember having the conversation with Louis—“How tight is the frame going to be?”—because I had a feeling it was going to go big. And I was like, “Maybe we back up a little bit for at least one of them.” So there is room for Daniel to hop all over the place. I really enjoyed that day on set.
I also enjoyed the interaction at the beginning of the film with Roz, Daniel’s boss, because it would be hard to listen to that performance without laughing.
Michelle Gomez is so good. She brought so much to Roz. This was clearly a woman who was very into herself. And she looked down on Daniel so much. Again, a lot of it was in the script, but Michelle brought some of her own stuff. Daniel very much just wants to please her. That scene just depended on how much he was trying to make her like him and how much he knew she didn’t like him.
That pivotal moment when you tell the story to Isla and Sandy has a nice echo at the end with an almost-meta point about what stories mean to us. What will the audience learn about the importance of stories?
A well-told story brings everybody together, from when you’re a kid and you’re around the campfire, to when you’re up late at night and somebody tells you a story from their childhood for the first time, and you see a different part of them, to everybody sitting in a cinema together and experiencing the same story. There is nothing like it. Humans have done it forever. This story felt so specific, and it cared about the value of stories to people. A well-told story is hard to come by, and I just think this is supremely well told. Louis puts you in safe hands from the very beginning.
You’ve worked in some of the biggest franchises of all time with huge budgets and special effects. What is the best thing about working on a little independent film from a first-time filmmaker like this one?
I found it incredibly invigorating. It reinvigorated my love for independent films, for watching them, for being a part of them. We were all away from home. We were up at the very tippy top of Scotland. There were loads of people who were up a level from where they’d been working before. Everyone was trying their hardest. We were all in it together, and they were tough days, but we had super producers. We had super heads of department across the board. Everybody who was on it was bringing their A game because they cared about it. No one was there for the money; no one was there for a paycheck. They were all there because they loved this thing, and they wanted to make it good. There’s nothing else like it.
I have to ask you: was it hard to learn the dancing in Taylor Swift’s “Opalite” video?
[Laughs] Yes, it was embarrassingly hard. I keep on forgetting the phrase, I think it was “full send“ was what Taylor used, Which was that the doing of it is what makes it good, that you have to believe totally in it.
I had a concerned look as we were doing it because I was trying to remember the moves, and she was like, “Forget all that; we go for it now.” That’s why she’s one of the best entertainers in the world, as well as a great artist. It reminded me what it means to be a good actor. I am by no means a good dancer, but it only works if you believe in it 100%. I did not know those moves as well as I wanted to, but I went for it. And I think you can see that in the video. I’m very proud of it.
