Nicolas Cage is aptly unbalanced as a father out for revenge in Lorcan Finnegan’s Australia-set psychological thriller The Surfer. Photo: Supplied.
The Surfer is a hallucinatory Australian thriller that stars Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage and features Western Australia’s beautiful beaches in all their splendour.
This intensely unnerving feature film sees a man trapped by his own coercions. Cage injects a trace of barely controlled desperation into those early scenes.
The storyline follows a man who returns to Australia to buy back his family home after many years in the US, but is humiliated in front of his teenage son (Finn Little) by a group of powerful local surfers who claim ownership over the secluded beach of his childhood.
This protagonist is called The Surfer, a role played by Cage (Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation, The Rock). All he wanted was to return to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son, which is not likely to happen, amicably, anytime soon.
Aggrieved, he’s pushed to breaking point and defies the group, is drawn into a conflict and remains at the beach, demanding acquiescence. Apart from Cage, the film has an Australian ensemble cast that includes Julian McMahon, Nicholas Cassim, Miranda Tapsell, Alexander Bertrand, Justin Rosniak, Rahel Romahn, Little and Charlotte Maggi. It had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival on 17 May. While no theatrical release date has been announced, it will stream on Stan.
The Surfer sets the scene as he drives towards the stunning beach he grew up on, saying: “You can’t stop a wave. It’s pure energy. Born in a storm, way out to sea, brewing and churning for days, weeks, months, sometimes even years. It’s all building to this breaking point: a short, sharp shock of violence on the shore. And you either surf it, or you get wiped out.”
Visibly desperate, Cage’s character wants to connect with his son (called The Kid), who appears to be unmoved by his father’s sentiments. Looking at him wryly, Cage explains: “That was my best surfing-as-a-metaphor-for-life speech. I was hoping for more enthusiasm.” He lives with his soon-to-be ex-wife.
In the meantime, The Surfer is in denial about his failed marriage. He’s trying to recapture his past by leveraging all of his assets to buy his childhood home, though another potential buyer is standing in his way. He aims to revive himself once he gets his beach back.
Then, heading towards the water, comes the verbal shockwave. “Don’t live here, don’t surf here!” barks a fuming personification of narcissist machismo, Pitbull (Bertrand), who also happens to be wearing a Santa hat. Attempting to scale down a potentially volatile situation is the noticeable leader of the local gang called Bad Boys, Scally (McMahon, FBI: Most Wanted, Runaways, Nip/Tuck,) one of the few characters given a spoken name.
As The Surfer insists “This is a public beach”, Scally explains the law of the land (according to the locals), proposing that there are plenty of other beaches where they can surf. After they are sinisterly surrounded, Cage fears for his son’s safety and relents, walking back up to the parking lot. Infuriated though heartened, Cage haunts the beach parking lot for days, becoming increasingly miserable, getting sunburnt, and asking for help from the police, but all to no avail. Even the locals do not come to his rescue.
He ignores a local man (Cassim) — who’s long lived out of his own car in the parking lot — until he needs to borrow the man’s binoculars for spying. He barters for them with an expensive pair of sunglasses, which sets off a sort of domino effect of Cage parting with all of his material belongings. As the conflict escalates, he is brought right to the edge of his sanity and his entire identity is thrown into question.
Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan (Without Name, Vivaarium, Nocebo) and Irish screenwriter Thomas Martin (Ripper Street, Tin Star, Prime Target) set out to make a film that feels like a strange dream, exploring materialism, identity and belonging, repressed memory, masculinity and rebirth. Being shot on a remote beach and carpark in Yallingup, Western Australia, it is a weird and wonderful experience!
Getting a sense of an ”outsider’s view”, here’s a subjective experience of a man trying to come to terms with himself. A dark comedy about someone who just wants to surf, and will risk everything he has to do it.
The Surfer, directed by Lorcan Finnegan, premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and will soon begin screening in cinemas and streaming on Stan
