Film Review: The Surfer (2025) - Australia / Ireland
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 6/10
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Lorcan Finnegan’s “The Surfer” arrives drenched in Australian sun and drenched, too, in a very particular kind of madness. It’s the madness born of humiliation, of territorial pissings, and of Nicolas Cage pushed to the very brink. The film is a visually arresting, often uncomfortable plunge into the roiling psyche of a man unraveling on his home turf, yet it ultimately finds itself paddling in circles, unable to harness the powerful riptide it generates.
The premise is primal, almost mythic: a nameless man (Cage), adrift in corporate blandness, returns to the Australian coastal paradise of his youth with his teenage son. He seeks solace, perhaps a connection, certainly a wave. What he finds instead is a brutal assertion of "localism," embodied by a sneering surf gang led by late Aussie actor Julian McMahon (in his final film appearance), whose territorial grip on the beach is enforced with petty cruelties and escalating psychological torture. Denied access to the waves, our protagonist makes a baffling, masochistic choice: he will remain, trapped in the sun-baked purgatory of a beachside parking lot.
And here is where Cage takes the wheel, or rather, abandons it. This is a performance calibrated for maximum Cage-ian intensity, oscillating between wounded bewilderment and volcanic rage. Watching him navigate the mundane hell of bureaucratic beach access, losing car keys under the watchful eyes of his tormentors, is like witnessing a cosmic joke played on Sisyphus. Cage makes every slight, every smirk from the locals, feel like a dagger twist. His descent from simmering frustration to primal, sunstroke-fueled desperation is the film’s undeniable engine. He is the movie, for better and, eventually, for slightly worse.
Finnegan crafts an atmosphere thick with menace. The stunning Western Australian coastline, captured in saturated, high-contrast hues by cinematographer Radek Ladczuk, becomes less an idyll and more a gilded cage. The heat shimmers oppressively; the beauty turns claustrophobic. The editing masterfully induces a disorienting, fever-dream quality, reflecting the protagonist’s fractured mental state. McMahon’s gang are effectively loathsome, though they function more as archetypes – personifications of toxic masculinity and unwelcoming tribalism – than as fleshed-out characters.
Where “The Surfer” wipes out is in its narrative endurance. The central conflict is established with brutal efficiency, but the film becomes enamored with its own premise of cyclical humiliation. The long stretches in the parking lot, while intended to showcase psychological disintegration, become narratively stagnant. We understand the man’s breaking point long before the film decides to fully commit to its final, surreal lurch. The metaphors – masculinity adrift, the poisoned notion of "owning" land, the futility of reclaiming a vanished past – are potent but laid on with a trowel, often substituting striking, surreal imagery for deeper character exploration or plot momentum. The shift in the third act towards a more fable-like, almost folk-horror conclusion feels less like an organic escalation and more like an escape hatch from the repetitive torment Finnegan has orchestrated.
“The Surfer” is a compelling, stylish exercise in atmosphere and Cage-ian excess, a worthy entry into the sun-scorched annals of Ozploitation. It offers a visceral, often hypnotic look at the fragility of the male ego when stripped of its societal armor. Yet, for all its striking visuals and Cage’s ferocious commitment, the film succumbs to its own repetitive rhythm. It’s a bold wave attempted, generating impressive spray and sound, but it doesn’t quite carry us all the way to shore. It’s a film I admired more than loved, a half-recommendation powered almost entirely by the undeniable spectacle of Cage raging against the dying of the light – and the tide, and the parking regulations. (Neo, 2025)