The Surfer

Nicolas Cage is The Surfer in this wildly enjoyable, gleefully deranged film about an ambitious family man whose dream of owning the beachside home where he grew up (and learned to ride the waves) is violently derailed by a territorial local surf cult.

“You can’t stop a wave, it’s pure energy… you either surf it, or it wipes you out.” The opening words of The Surfer, spoken by the otherwise unnamed title character to his teenage son, could just as easily apply to audience members encountering Lorcan Finnegan’s fantastically entertaining film, a wildly unpredictable psychological thriller with the irresistible momentum of a peaking wave.

Set amidst the gorgeous white sands of Australia’s south-eastern coast, The Surfer is a paradise-gone-awry parable which follows Cage, a hardworking dad who has made huge sacrifices in order to save enough money to buy his beachside childhood home. When he takes his son to see his future house however, the pair are confronted by thugs who insist the beach is for “locals only.” It soon becomes clear that the area has been taken over by a violent surf cult led by the malevolent Scally (Julian McMahon), a wealthy businessman who preaches toxic masculine ideology while presiding over drug-fuelled parties and violent hazing rituals. When Cage refuses to give up his claim to the beach, he is sucked into the cult’s web of madness, with increasingly unhinged results. A gleefully deranged midnight film and a must for Cage connoisseurs.

– Rachel Pronger

Trailer

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