Director Lorcan Finnegan's The Surfer concerns a battle between various factions of the 1%. On the one hand, we have The Surfer (Nicolas Cage, playing "the titular role!"), a rich guy cruising around in a fancy Lexus. He's so connected to modern technology that he only has credit cards on his phone. He’s eagerly trying to repurchase his childhood home overlooking an Australian beach. With his wife officially divorcing him and his son becoming distant, Surfer is clinging to the past, hoping it can be a cure-all remedy for his woes. Meanwhile, there's Scally (Julian McMahon), a "trust fund brat" posing as a macho man of the Earth who believes men are being "suppressed" in the modern world.
In Scally's eyes, dudes need a place to blow off steam and tap into their primal instincts. That location turns out to be the beach next to Surfer's dream home. As The Surfer tries to share his childhood beach with his offspring, Scally and his army of fascist Gen Z bro followers offer Surfer a warning: "don't live here, don't surf here." You can't get rid of a Nicolas Cage protagonist that easily, though. Shades of farcical Eugène Ionesco and Georges Feydeau plays seep into Thomas Martin's script as The Surfer fails to leave the beach's parking lot. This is despite facing endless harassment and gradually losing pieces of his cushy lifestyle (his phone, shoes, sunglasses, etc.). He can’t leave the past. He just can’t.
The Surfer has several themes on its mind, including differing portraits of “proper” masculinity and especially the dangers of exerting too much control over your existence. The latter concept manifests in Surfer’s opening voice-over monologue to his son where he delivers his “best surfing as a metaphor for life.” You have to surrender to the waves to properly surf. Similarly, letting go often leads to prosperity in life. Want to see the opposite end of that tranquility? Just look at how burning intense desires for control from The Surfer and Scully only lead to violent mayhem.
However, even with these weighty concepts on The Surfer’s mind, Finnegan and Martin also have very simple pleasures on their mind. For one thing, the plot basically boils down to a middle-aged businessman getting harassed by Australia’s equivalent of America’s MAGA boys who think men are a marginalized group because it’s not socially acceptable to say the R-word. The Surfer is about the dark comedy of how far this chaos will go as well as seeing Cage slowly unravel in response to this barrage of cruelty. Speaking of Moonstruck's leading man, The Surfer's vividly interested in adding new footage to YouTube montages chronicling Cage's most unhinged moments.
Prepare to recoil in “oh no, he’s not…is he?” terror as Cage’s Surfer, in his weakest moments, contemplates the edibility of worm-infested baked goods in the trash or a collection of warm beer in a small pothole. The actor’s vivid facial expressions as he fights a rat inside a car or harasses a real estate agent will similarly delight the actor’s fans (read: me). Nothing in The Surfer even comes close to Cage’s greatest performances, like his pantsless bathroom breakdown in Mandy, that nightmare-inducing Longlegs interrogation, or basically any Pig scene. However, his unblinking gusto in embracing Surfer’s escalating madness is certainly entertaining. It’s also a reminder that few actors have this man’s captivating conviction.
Performers like Jared Leto only talk about “weirdo” acting flourishes before delivering generic on-screen work. Cage, meanwhile, just goes toe-to-toe with bite-happy rodents like nobody else. His distinctive Surfer performance is effectively paired with Finnegan and cinematographer Radzek Ladczuk’s flashy visual sensibilities. This descent into surfboard-motivated madness overflows with memorable imagery. This includes unique camera angles, like a scene where the audience watches from inside a cramped trash bin as The Surfer scrounges within this space for food.
A barrage of tight close-up angles nicely accentuates the ceaseless tension between Scully and The Surfer while there’s also a welcome dream-like look of frames capturing the latter character at his most delirious. The fuzzy appearance of these images vividly urges the viewer to question what’s real, what isn’t. Unfortunately, upending that ambiguity sends The Surfer into wobblier waters. Martin's script is too dialogue heavy for its own good, especially in a mid-movie scene where The Surfer encounters Scally engaging in a ritual with his followers. This set piece features a speech from Scully that, unfortunately, lays out The Surfer's ensuing narrative. It’s not a bad thing for a movie to rely heavily on shock value madness. However, this form of didactic dialogue removes all the chaotic uncertainty.
All that’s left is an endless deluge of scenes where 16-21-year-olds with the worst haircuts torment Cage’s Surfer. Some of the trippy, mean-spirited antics fulfill their dark comedy ambitions. However, as these shenanigans grew increasingly hard to differentiate, I yearned for a little more variety and madness. Watching egg yolk dribble down Cage’s chin can only carry a movie so far. Martin's script at least ends on a strong note with an engaging climax making great use of Nic Cassim's tormented performance as The Bum. Plus, the sunny Australian landscapes are pleasing to look at. All those blue skies and close-ups of distinctive critters (love that shot of a Kangaroo napping) provide plenty of eye candy.
At its best, The Surfer approximates a beachside nightmare while channeling realities' lunacies that we all take for granted. After all, you don’t have to witness unpleasant nighttime visions to experience the madness of cops functioning as bourgeois bodyguards, like one sleazeball cop enacting Scully’s bidding in The Surfer. Martin’s screenplay, though, stumbles in ensuring this material sustains a proper feature-length movie. Bizarro dreams shouldn’t lapse so easily into predictability. Cage’s reliably demented dedication delivers, but The Surfer doesn’t hang ten as consistently as its central performance.
Final sidenote: it’s hard to get over the reality that the entirety of The Surfer could’ve been avoided if The Surfer had just called up Cody Maverick from Shiverpool. That surfing legend could’ve taken down these obnoxious surfer bros in mere minutes!