Nicolas Cage does Ozploitation in this sun-soaked psychological thriller from director Lorcan Finnegan. Never one to be constrained by genre, the star has been putting out some of the most diverse work of his career in recent years – doing John Wick (but not really) with a pig in Pig; being dragged down a surrealist rabbit hole in Mandy; playing a nightmarish serial killer in Longlegs. There’s a Nicolas Cage for every season, and with The Surfer, that season is Christmas On The Beach.
Cage plays the titular Surfer – a man determined to get his life back on track by purchasing his old childhood home overlooking an idyllic beach. Wanting to show off their new digs, he takes his teenage son (Finn Little) on a surfing trip down on the sparkling waves. Humiliated by a gang of locals, the Surfer finds himself at loggerheads with beach guru Scally (a grizzled Julian McMahon) and stranded in a nearby parking lot. As their conflict intensifies, so too does the Surfer’s sense of rage and indignation, bubbling away until it reaches peak Cage.
Channeling the Aussie cult classic Wake in Fright, this Yallingup-set feature gradually cranks up the pressure until point break – sorry, breaking point – is achieved. And there’re few better candidates to play a man spiralling out of control than Nicolas Cage. Like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, he’s most of the way there before the film even starts, but Cage manages to find fresh layers of humiliation and degradation in the Surfer’s odyssey. The real enemy, as it turns out, isn’t so much Aggressive Surf Bros as it is one man’s midlife crisis, and The Surfer successfully blends its 70s exploitation influences with the tale of a middle-aged dude on a downward spiral. It’s Falling Down if everyone else had spent the whole time beating up on Michael Douglas instead (including Michael Douglas himself).
Drinking out of puddles and eating rats is fairly composed by Cage’s usual standards, but he makes it work. Memelords can say what they like, but no two Cage performances are ever the same, and his work in The Surfer is nuanced in its particular flavour of despairing dad.
It’s a sparse narrative, but finds all it needs in the tense interplay between an increasingly maniac Nicolas Cage and a colourful supporting cast of weirdos and assholes. Crisp visuals and a hypnotic soundtrack complete the dive into 70s-era Ozploitation, topped off with a typically self-deprecating performance from one of cinema’s most versatile figures.
THE SURFER is out in UK cinemas from 9th May 2025.
