17-05-2025
The Surfer brings together Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon and Miranda Tapsell in an Australian-made coastal thriller
These days, Nicolas Cage doesn't star in movies so much as he swallows them whole.
What: A middle-aged businessman returns to his coastal hometown, where he's mercilessly hazed by the locals.
Directed by: Lorcan Finegan
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Justin Rosniak
Where and When: In cinemas now
Likely to make you feel: Caged in
While his recent critical resurgence (via Pig, Mandy, and other fashionable indie projects) has rightfully restored some respect to his name, his larger-than-life presence remains a liability. Every Nicolas Cage film arrives with the expectation that it be weird, funny or at least provide a Classic Cage Freakout™ that can be strung to the end of a YouTube compilation.
Recent highlights like Dream Scenario, Renfield, and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent have tackled the problem head-on by casting Cage as characters who winkingly reference his prolific career and/or literally himself, celebrating his dual status as serious acting talent and perpetual meme machine.
Then there's The Surfer: a claustrophobic coastal thriller that asks audiences to believe that someone who looks, sounds and madly gesticulates like Nicolas Cage has spent his formative years chasing waves in a secluded Australian town.
That Cage's unnamed character (credited only as 'The Surfer') feels drastically out of place is, to some extent, the point. Having lived a cushy corporate life in the States, the psychic fallout of an impending divorce sends him spiralling back to his hometown, where he intends to close the purchase of his father's beachfront house and reconnect with his son (Finn Little).
As soon as he steps out of his shiny Lexus, a tan suit strapped to his skin, he's marked as easy prey by the area's merciless teens and authoritarian beach bros. Their opposition is rooted not so much in class rivalry — the hallmarks of gentrification, from wealthy dog-walkers to a pop-up café, have already taken root — but in vicious, sneering tribalism, enforced by the local mantra: "Don't live here, don't surf here."
When his surfboard is stolen, our defiant protagonist embarks on a misguided campaign to stake his claim on the beach. Across 99 varyingly plausible minutes, the film works hard to contrive reasons for its title character not to simply retreat from this hostile environment, even when his efforts see him beaten, stripped of his material possessions, and ripped from the shelter of his own car.
The result feels visually constricted — The Surfer spends interminable stretches circling a beach car park — yet narratively loose, struggling to turn the screws on its main character in the way that a single-location thriller demands.
At least the town's top dog, Scally, makes for an effective adversary. Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck) gamely transforms into a grind-set manosphere influencer with a legion of dedicated, meat-headed followers at his beck and call (among them, Justin Rosniak's slimy copper). It's likely the best performance anyone has given from underneath a scarlet hooded towel — a well-observed balance of supreme arrogance, laddish joviality and domineering menace.
The supporting cast also extends to a couple of friendlier faces, chiefly Miranda Tapsell's Photographer and Nicholas Cassim's Bum, a wronged vagrant haunting the shores whose semblance gradually mirrors Cage's sunburnt, raving protagonist.
Cage remains reasonably fun to watch, though you've seen much of this routine before. Director Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium) makes the most of his befuddled expressions throughout his slow-motion breakdown, frequently capturing him in exaggerated, low-angle compositions or zooming onto his grizzly visage.
Thankfully, the film is selective about exactly how much Cage one should unleash. The film's ironic tone — telegraphed by François Tétaz's syrupy, mid-century-flavoured score, and colour grading overly reminiscent of Espresso — sends up the Australian Dream and the cult of masculinity without undercutting the genuine grief that Cage is delivering.
It's still not enough to look past his egregious miscasting, considering there's no shortage of Australian actors who, true to his character, have largely spent their careers in America — especially when Julian McMahon would've perfectly fit the bill.
The Surfer disappoints, if only because it could be doing an awful lot more. Scally's sermonising repackages the masochistic misogyny of Fight Club's Tyler Durden, but the film half sells its allure, in part because Cage's pathetic, easily duped character isn't all that fun to toy with. A psychological thriller can only extend so far beyond a protagonist as sparsely characterised as this one.
Genre fans will likely get a kick out of the film — you could certainly do worse when it comes to Cage's filmography — but The Surfer is hardly riding another New Wave.
The Surfer is in cinemas now.
