★★★★

starring: nicolas cage, julian mcmahon, nic cassim, and finn little​

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REVIEWER: Lyall carter

A man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. When he is humiliated by a group of locals, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising and pushes him to his breaking point.

When I was a teenager I worked in a small menswear shop in a small town in New Zealand. Strangely, that is where I encountered Julian McMahon, the original Dr. Doom. Strange in that, for a Hollywood based actor, he’d visit a town as small as ours. Kinda fitting that the new film he stars in alongside the legend Nic Cage is as bizarre as they come. While it nearly loses you in its madness, The Surfer is a modern day Hitchcockian thriller with a performance from Nicholas Cage that really grounds the film. 

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In the psychological thriller directed by Lorcan Finnegan, a man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. But his desire to hit the waves is thwarted by a group of locals whose mantra is “don’t live here, don’t surf here.” Humiliated and angry, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising in concert with the punishing heat of the summer and pushes him to his breaking point.

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For a film that’s primarily set at a beach carpark, The Surfer takes us on one hell of a ride. Beginning innocently enough, we are given glimpses from the beginning of Nicholas Cage’s character’s descent into madness and obsession mirroring Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The Surfer is fueled by a real sense of toxic masculinity and examines the cult-like obsession disaffected males have for ‘influencers’ of Andrew Tate’s ilk which pushes against the sensibilities of Cage's character. 

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And while the narrative pushes the audience from one position, Nic Cage’s character really is being gaslit, to another, the Aussie heat has got to his head and he really is going mad, what centres the film is Cage’s performance. For an actor that really can take things to the absolute limit and beyond, Cage is remarkably grounded here which in turn helps to centre the film for the audience. It is a real, mature performance filled with gravitas. 

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While it nearly loses you in its madness, The Surfer is a modern day Hitchcockian thriller with a performance from Nicholas Cage that really grounds the film.

★★★★