The Surfer (Lorcan Finnegan, 2024 / 2025)
The redemption arc of the eccentric Nicolas Cage is one that will be discussed by film bros for many years. The Oscar winner and Hollywood A-lister fell from mainstream grace and spent years in straight-to-video hell, before emerging again an as an indie film hero. He had also become an internet icon, prior; thanks to comical videos and memes, putting him on similar pedestal to Chuck Norris and Keanu Reeves. And so, Cage essentially cashed-in on his unhinged performances, leading to a late career renaissance and garnering critical acclaim with the films Mandy (2018) and Pig (2021). His latest endeavour, the psychological thriller The Surfer (2024 / 2025), is another notable manic performance in his illustrious career.
Set in the fictional locale known as Luna Bay in Western Australia, our protagonist makes his entrance driving his son to a house he's eager to buy. This residential property has personal significance to Cage's character, as it was his former childhood home. It's eventually revealed why he ended up in California; hence the lack of an Aussie accent. The Surfer is eager to buy it. Like all midlife crises, looking to rekindle the good times of his past; including his love of surfing. Being a Nicolas Cage film, nothing is ever that easy. It's not long before he's facing the prospect of being gazumped over his childhood home. To make matters worse, the territorial bogans won't allow non-locals to catch the waves. "Don't live here; don't surf here".
One would assume, given The Surfer's premise and Cage playing the action hero in the past, it would be heading into familiar territory; it doesn't. Instead, director Lorcan Finnegan opts for a surreal endurance, that's somewhere in between the fractured mental state of The Swimmer (1968) and the daylight horror of the Aussie nightmare Wake in Fright (1971). Furthermore, Cage spends much of the film trapped in a car park like a fly in a web. Finnegan absolutely relishes putting Cage through a gamut of suffering to it coming across as sadistic. Observing Cage gradually degrade to the point of having to rummage through bins for food, and drinking water from puddles littered with cigarette butts, is both tragic and farcical.
Yet, despite some heavy themes, The Surfer does not to really dwell into really psychological horror territory like those other films. It's first and foremost a vehicle accommodating Cage's comfort zone in going doolally. Therefore, Finnegan's film is equally an alternative comedy as it is a psychological thriller, in many respects.
Before long, Cage's dreams begin to shatter in a series of anxiety driven scenarios. A vagrant, credited in the film as the Bum (Nic Cassim), living in a broken down car, shares many ambiguous similarities with Cage's Surfer. The Bum warns our eponymous character that the leader of the local surf thugs is the one responsible for the death of his son, along with killing his dog, too.
Scally (Julian McMahon), a men's surf guru, serves as the film's antagonist. Dressed in a hooded, red towel robe and sporting and a constant devilish smile, Scally puts the Surfer through the absolute ringer; where his entire world begins to collapse. It reaches the point where he even doubts his very existence given the grand conspiratorial scheme that seems to be against him. Even nature itself plays a part in crapping on the titular hero, as a parrakeet literally shit on him, along with a run-in he has with a rat; evoking the Australian ecological horror Long Weekend (1978).
The Surfer's biggest highlight is Cage charging to the beach wielding a "LOCALS ONLY" sign post as a weapon and confronting Pitbull (Alexander Bertrand), one of Scally's bully disciples. The fight results in Cage ramming a dead rat into the bully's mouth. "You eat it! Eat the rat!", the most quotable line in the entire film.
A difficult film to pin down. I enjoyed this a great deal, but it's definitely not for everyone; even I can admit to that. A very close friend of mine, who had seen it prior to me, absolutely hated it and warned me about it. Curiosity obviously got the better of me, and I was far more positive about it than him, as I found it a far more rewarding experience than many of the other films that have been released this year. Therefore, I can absolutely see The Surfer being considered a Marmite film. Personally, this is Cage's most entertaining film since Mandy, so make of that what you will.