Lorcan Finnegan

The Surfer

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Nicolas Cage with surfboard

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 … Read more

Nocebo

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Christine screams in fear

Nocebo is director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Garret Shanley’s follow-up to the massively stylised Vivarium. It’s another horror movie, a much more conventional and familiar one this time, though driving it is something not so often encountered in horror – a “the empire strikes back” tale of capitalist overlords sucking a big one. In a property-porn house in Dublin, Christine (Eva Green), her hunky husband Felix (Mark Strong) and their cute, smart kid Bobs (Billie Gadsdon) lead the lives that people of their class do. While the kid’s at a nice school, he works in marketing strategy and she’s a successful designer of children’s clothes, who we first meet supervising the shoot for … Read more