The Surfer looks like it’s going to be a wet and sandy version of John Wick or Nobody, since it starts off with a dad and his son being chased off the beach where they want to catch a wave by a group of surf bums who insist this public beach is closed to outsiders. Since the dad, billed as “the Surfer”, is played by Nicolas Cage, there is an expectation that at some point this meek, suburban father is going to lose the plot most epically, since that is one of Cage’s skills. And in the end he does lose it, just not in the way we anticipate.
That’s the really clever thing about Lorcan Finnegan’s film – it manages to tell one story while keeping the powder dry on the other one. Things could go John Wick at any moment, couldn’t they?
So, a man re-introducing his (reluctant) son to the place where he grew up in Australia, discovering he’s no longer “local” enough for the “Bay Boys” who control the beach and then, for reasons that don’t stand up to logical scrutiny, getting caught in the car park overlooking the bay for days.
Here the Surfer courts disaster with the feral gang, while trying to finalise the sale on his childhood home, which he’s buying now it’s back on the market. He’s also dealing with the end of his marriage. His work situation is a touch shakier than he’s letting on. And there are demons from the past ready to re-emerge now he’s back on his native soil. A cocktail of woe that leaves the Surfer after a few days looking like a vagrant, no money, no phone, no car.
Finnegan opens his film with the words “The Surfer” in yellow emblazoned against the blue of the sky and the white of the surf, to all intents making this look like a 1960s surfer movie. These bright, poppy looks act as a counterpoint to what follows, the outward-looking progressivism of the 1960s positioned against the “localist” conservatism of the 2020s as expressed by the Bay Boys and their leader, Scally (Julian McMahon), one of those gurus doling out advice to men left behind by the feminisation of culture.
You can ignore all the man-guru, conservative discourse stuff entirely and it’s still a mightily good film – about a man under extreme psychological attack (from within, mostly) just losing the plot. Finnegan shifts the tone in increments from sun-drenched and realistic to nightmarish, until things end up as a kind of peyote time-travel bad trip, with a loungecore soundtrack tinkling away just to make things even weirder.
Cage unhinged is what everyone wants to see, but he doesn’t snap so much as parcel it out in little packets. A controlled detonation leading to personality implosion rather than explosion.
McMahon often plays well dressed smooth operators and if that’s all you know him for, prepare to see him anew as the aggressive leader of the Boys, a decent tan and a good old-guy haircut making him look every inch the grifter he’s playing.
Director Finnegan is known for his high concept movies, like Vivarium and Nocebo. They don’t always work but they are always bold, and he’s bold here with Thomas Martin’s screenplay meditating on a cultural shift – doctrinal conformity (Scally is literally baptising young men in the sea) sold as freedom.
This is a film with definite arc, from one set of values to another mockingly exemplified by a character falling to bits. Broken by a wave? Maybe? Well worth riding.
The Surfer – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
