The Plot: A man simply known as The Surfer (Nicolas Cage) returns to his childhood hometown by the sea in Australia. He’s about to close a deal on securing his original family home and needs to stay in contact with the real estate agent. He takes his son The Kid (Finn Little) to go surfing, but finds himself butting heads with the territorial surfers who don’t take kindly to strangers, even if they grew up there. After stealing The Surfer’s board as a warning, their leader and respectable local businessman Scally (Julian McMahon) gives The Surfer some friendly advice to take his business elsewhere. The Surfer doesn’t pay any attention to that…
The Verdict: Dubliner Lorcan Finnegan has been gradually building up a name for himself in the horror and cult film stakes. Without Name, Vivarium and Nocebo all showed signs of continuous progression in his talent for visual filmmaking and working with notable international actors so that his films stretched beyond national borders. His latest offering The Surfer is quite comfortably his most accomplished film yet, with the director firing on all cylinders. He’s delivered a daytime nightmare of a film that builds like a pressure cooker before blowing the lid off and then igniting the contents to cause structural cracks. He then dynamites the pressure cooker for added effect. The result is a very unique and particular film that has both a dreamy and nightmarish quality to it, further enhanced by the performance of Nicolas Cage who goes all in and surfs through the film with his singular talent.
Surfers are known to be quite a territorial bunch and possessive of their local beaches, but they aren’t confined to just Southern California. Thomas Martin’s script was always intended to be set in Australia, where that kind of aggressively macho behaviour is more the norm and here given a blind eye by the police as simply part of the local culture. Boiled down to its simple form, the script is essentially about a man in a car park who desperately wants to surf the waters below but is held back both by the local surfers and his own pig-headedness in inflaming the conflict. The single location is not something that is obviously apparent – the film is shot in such a clever way that the open air environment comes across as wider in focus. Finnegan has stated that the hauntingly excellent 1968 film The Swimmer (Burt Lancaster’s personal favourite of his films) is a direct influence here. It can be sensed in the way that The Surfer sees only his own delusional view of events past and present and doesn’t know when to back off and leave well enough alone.
Martin’s script works in layers, gradually stripping off the armour of The Surfer’s character as he gradually descends into some sort of mania and heads towards breaking point. As the unforgiving summer heat bakes down on him, he becomes more dishevelled, hungry, thirsty and desperate to get his board back and go surfing. This is where Cage comes in and it’s a spot-on piece of casting. Sometimes it’s hard to know which kind of Cage is going to turn up: Oscar-winning Cage; maximalist, wigging-out Cage; phoning-it-in, straight-to-streaming Cage; or the kind of experimental Mandy-level Cage which sees him pull off one acting masterclass of a scene after another. The Surfer is very much in the vein of Mandy-level Cage, as he descends to the point of drinking dirty water and says ‘What?’ as a passer-by interrupts him as he’s about to chow down on a dead rat (!). Cage apparently got quite attached to the prop dead rat, but that’s very much in tone with his admirable go-anywhere, do-anything approach to acting. Cage fans are going to lap this one up.
From distinctive start to satisfying finish, The Surfer has all the signs of a director’s vision that remains true to its mission statement. It’s an intense story that is drawn out to excruciating lengths – for the main character that is, not the audience. It’s darkly funny and often takes wild swings, but pays off with a synchronised collaboration between director, writer and actor that works a treat. It can often take a while for an audience to discover a true and unique original, which is how it ultimately becomes a cult film that is beloved in later years e.g. Donnie Darko. That’s not the case with The Surfer. It’s a ready-made, instant cult hit that deserves to find a wider audience willing to open their minds and be surprised. Dive in and hold on tight to that surfboard.
Rating: 4 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor
In short: Instant cult hit
Directed by Lorcan Finnegan. Starring Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little, Alexander Bertrand.