The Surfer ★★★

The Surfer is a wild ride. Playing like a sunstroke-induced nightmare of Ozploitation-influenced chaos, it is a disorienting assault on the senses following an outlandish premise. A man (Nicolas Cage) arrives at a beach with his son (Finn Little). As they approach, the man explains that a wave born out of a storm slowly makes its way toward land, violently crashing upon the shore after it reaches its breaking point. Surfing is the art of choosing to ride that wave, instead of letting it wipe you out. As he turns to his son, he naturally connects this as a symbol to life itself, but it is also a summation of director Lorcan Finnegan’s film. This unnamed man has returned to the beach of his youth, hoping to restore his relationship with his son and to win back his estranged wife by buying his old childhood home, which overlooks the beach and the ocean. First, he wants to show his son the house from the water, which is the best vantage point to see it in its full glory. As they will soon discover, this beach is marked by “localism” and the violent refusal on the part of a cult-like gang known as the “Bay Boys” to allow any non-locals to surf. However, this unnamed man is not one to just accept it and drive off, intent on forcing his way into the water.

What starts off as some pushing and shoving soon turns into psychological torture. Though his son leaves, the man does not. He is obsessed with being able to surf this particular beach and the Bay Boys, under the leadership of Scally (Julian McMahon), will not let him surf. The man meets a Bum (Nic Cassim), who has also been the victim of the Bay Boys’ unique brand of exclusionary tactics, while basically everyone around the area is in on the act. The real estate agent who is selling the home the man wants to buy, the local police, any locals who just happen to pass by, and a local pop-up coffee shop owner. There is nowhere for the man to turn and as they begin gaslighting him, depriving him of shelter, fluids, and food, and breaking him down to the very foundation of his mental health; The Surfer embarks on a disturbing and haunting descent into madness. It is a role that only Nicolas Cage could play to the degree that he does, giving himself over entirely to every dramatic indulgence of this wild individual. There are some scenes of genuine hilarity mixed in – if one finds the scenes involving a rat to be funny, then The Surfer will certainly be on your wavelength and it was very much on my wavelength – with the film pitched in a fever dream absurdity.

The Bay Boys truly think of everything when it comes to breaking this man, though it does not take much. The Surfer, aside from exploring the hostility of some surf culture, is a film centered on toxic masculinity. Scally doubles as an influencer on men taking charge of their lives, letting the “animal” out, and embracing the violent role that he believes men must assume in order for society to function. It is, to outsiders, a “boys being boys” situation that lets these local men blow off steam, but it is also a cult of personality and violence. Scally baptizes new recruits and leads this mental torture of men like the unnamed man who dare to break into their isolated and exclusive society. The unnamed man himself is a prime target for this movement. He has fond memories of this beach because of his youth and because it was the last time he was with his father, who committed suicide at the same age that the man is now. He sees his life going in the same direction, separated in marriage and aimless in life. He was once free, writing about surfing and traveling the world. Now, he works a dead-end corporate job, is being pressed to sign divorce papers so that his wife can marry another man (who she is also now pregnant by), and his relationship with his son is broken. 

It feels like Fight Club for settled down one-time free spirits or divorcees, a mid-life crisis and perceived emasculation driving this man to yearn for his youth, to feel free again, and to avert his life away from the same result that befell his father. Scally and the Bay Boys may be an unexpected impediment, but he will not let anything get in the way of the perceived freedom and power offered by this waterfront home and the surf. The man is convinced that if he can just buy back his old family home and surf with his son, then his wife will return and his son will bond with him like the man could with his own father. It is delusional, but this is a man at the end of his rope. He is, as foretold, a wave that emerged from a storm long ago. Now, as the man crashes onto the beach, he is violently reaching his breaking point. The Surfer successfully builds out this character with great depth and subtext that makes it a truly rich examination of a man at a breaking point, a la Fight Club or another 90s mid-life crisis classic in Falling Down. Finnegan, writer Thomas Martin, and Cage are working in perfect harmony together with a tight background, Cage’s manic performance, and Finnegan’s slow burn direction that allows every little indiscretion, mental uncertainty, and toxic masculinity-induced threat to take hold, building to a wonderful crescendo.

The Surfer benefits from Finnegan and cinematographer Radek Ładczuk’s terrific work in making the man’s mental and physical decay into something truly experienced by the audience. Ladczuk relies heavily on disorienting setups with smash zooms, extreme close-ups on the eyes, spinning aerials, binocular-enhanced iris shots, and truly mesmerizing point-of-view hallucinations complete with some of those zooms, more spinning, and a mise en scène that emphasizes chaos and collision. Repeated close-ups framing Cage behind the broken windshield of a battered old station wagon, close-ups on the beating sun, and the sun-blasted color palette with bright yellows, oranges, and reds, drops the audience right into the mind and experiences of the man as his mind becomes wracked with personal insecurity, sunstroke, and uncertainty. It all brings to life this sweltering, sticky, and vile environment, juxtaposed by the bright, almost ethereal light emanating above the ocean. It not only offers respite in terms of its cool and refreshing nature – Cage’s increasingly cracked and mangled appearance makes it apparent the man is in desperate need of both – but it calls to him like a siren, driving him closer to the edges of sanity. Quick cuts from editor Tony Cranstoun further the film’s sharp and abrasive nature with The Surfer doing everything it can to make the audience as uncomfortable as its protagonist.

The Surfer will not be for everyone. It is an admittedly unpleasant and often challenging watch, a film that is an assault on the senses and can be as intent to drive off those unwilling to indulge its mental torture as the Bay Boys are. However, as a visual expression of madness and a thematically rich exploration of a man at a breaking point and the appeal and poisonous threat of toxic masculinity, it has a lot to offer. Add in a characteristically unhinged Nicolas Cage performance and The Surfer is a wave worth riding.