Will Penn drops anchor for Lorcan Finnegan’s The Surfer.
Lorcan Finnegan’s new film The Surfer, written by Thomas Martin, is a delightfully unhinged odyssey. It follows an unnamed man who just wants to surf the waves along the Australian coast with his son. Upon first glance, it might appear that the most surreal thing about this movie would be Nicolas Cage as the eponymous surfer — wetsuited up to the gills. But as with many a Nicolas Cage movie — there is truly an ocean beyond the waves.
Cage delivers an idiosyncratically demented performance so singular it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. He is unusual, entertaining, charismatic and wildly flamboyant as he embodies a failing father and businessman. This surfer is returning to his childhood town in Australia to buy a home on the idyllically named Clifftop Drive. But his pride comes before an inevitable fall.
Cage’s character and his son are refused access by territorial surfers who repeat the mantra, “Don’t live here, don’t surf here.” They are led by Scally (Julian McMahon), a tanned Colonel Kurtz/Andrew Tate hybrid with a smile that curls like a wave about to drag you under. They meet like the relentless sea meets a cliff wall — Cage’s insistence and their retaliative violence leave him penniless, wandering the dunes. He drinks from puddles, is plastered in bird shit, and insists to repulsed beachgoers that he’s there to buy a house. As these humiliations accumulate and his connection to reality becomes increasingly tenuous, Cage lurches from indignant to humiliated to vengeful — and is finally redeemed. It is, albeit, a very sunburnt redemption.
The Surfer excels at balancing a throbbing undercurrent of dread with a rewarding payoff. The hallucinogenic ambience heightens the bizarre rituals that form the alpha-male rites of passage. The motif of the need to return to primal and barbaric states to rectify masculinity in contemporary society ebbs into every shadowy corner of the film. The Australian wildlife in Finnegan’s vision is simultaneously one of breathtaking beauty and pure fear — kookaburras laugh as the story twists, beetles throb dreadfully in the night, spiders stare right down the lens of the camera seemingly into our very souls. These moments of psychedelic anxiety are a unique cinematic experience.
Despite these highs, the film isn’t without low tides. Not to give too much away, but one stark revelation is overtly foreshadowed, and while certain beats are cathartic, they don’t service the themes of modern masculinity and redemption that have been set up. Perhaps the safety of the conclusion feels so out of kilter with the dangerous and genuinely crazed highlights that wash us along with such propulsive power — Cage’s surfer screaming “YOU eat the rat!”, the hallucinogenic branding scene, and the inventive cinematography that shapes such a distinctive and oppressive atmosphere.
With his extensive catalogue of work, Finnegan has a rare ability to assemble personal narrative within wider social tides in a very entertaining way. In the hands of a lesser director, a film like this may have been more self-serious or moralising. However, the straightforward intensity that he brings will make this an important addition to Cage’s filmography. At its crazed, combustible best, The Surfer reminds us how gloriously disorienting and entertaining cinema can be when no one’s playing it safe.
The Surfer is in cinemas 9th May 2025.
Podcast: Director Lorcan Finnegan & Writer Thomas Martin of ‘The Surfer’
