Review: Nicolas Cage Goes Full 'Groundhog Day' Thriller in 'The Surfer'
A surprisingly low-key Nicolas Cage performance anchors The Surfer, a throwback revenge thriller with a jet-black comedic edge from Vivarium director Lorcan Finnegan.
For about 40 minutes, this film is an intriguing and even propulsive B-movie programmer. The first act is an efficient revenge setup, infused with some lush photography (the picture was shot on location in Melbourne) and an authentic grittiness which recalls '70s Antipodean grindhouse classics. But unfortunately, like all exploitation riffs which make the mistake of taking themselves too seriously, The Surfer goes on far too long and eventually exhausts its audience.
Cage plays the titlular character, an unnamed office drone who whisks his son (Finn Little) to an idyllic coastal spot in the community where he was raised. The Surfer wants to buy a home overlooking the beach, the very same one in which he lived until age 15, when his father died and his mother moved the family to California. Hoping to take his son out to catch a few waves and an enviable glimpse of their new abode, he's instead met with some hostile 'localism' from the beach's resident muscle heads who are engaged in a bizarre salt-water cult overseen by Scally (Julian McMahon).
At this point, The Surfer takes a detour into the sort of nightmare comedy about which you can ask no questions. Why, after being violently rebuffed and humiliated in front of his son, does Cage begin living on the beach in his car? Why does he keep returning to receive fresh injuries from the cult members? Why not just grab an Airbnb near his new home? What's up with the old man, also living out of his car, who's passing around flyers advertising his missing son? And why, after stealing his surfboard, do the cult members claim they've had it for seven years?
There's a lot going on in The Surfer — the broken relationships of fathers and sons; the seeping wounds of male ego; mid-life malaise; the unexplained possibility of time loops — but none of it develops into anything. It's long been the safe haven of marginally talented filmmakers to produce a hallucinatory, vaguely existential film of dubious quality and pass it off as the vision of an auteur; but when the quality isn't there, it's all terribly transparent. Instead of interrogating or developing any of the ideas to which the film gestures, Finnegan visits a succession of increasingly outlandish humiliations onto his title character, all of which seem tailor-made for Cage's particular acting style. Watch him drink dirty water from a puddle (and later a public toilet)! Wince as he jumps onto broken glass! Shudder when he pawns his late father's watch for a flat white!The screenplay, by Thomas Martin, doubtless sent its cast and crew into fits of giggles. None of that mirth translates to the screen. By the time Cage swings a live rat by the tail (which he later beats to death and pockets for a snack) and attempts to shoot a dog in the head, you'll likely wish the whole thing would end so you can go home. Sequences which seem designed to provoke a strong emotional reaction pass without impression, boring instead of outraging. The climax is so foregone and uninspiring that your mind may wander to your shopping list in the film's final moments.
It's worth mentioning that there's an admirable nastiness to this movie, and one gets the sense that Finnegan would do nicely with a straight, no-frills suspense piece. There's a queasy quality to the beach bullies that wouldn't be out of place in a home invasion movie, and before it goes off the rails, the film chugs along with a nicely suspenseful rhythm. There are even fleeting moments where you see in Finnegan's approach something of the efficient, genre-literate subversion Steven Soderbergh accomplishes so effortlessly.
But what's the point of it all? Considering most of its business will presumably be done on streaming, it's odd that The Surfer so frequently tempts its audience to tune out. Unfortunately, the temptation stems not from the visceral impact of the travesties visited upon Cage (none of which truly land) but rather from the intense feeling of déjà vu. For all of its excesses, we've seen this done many times before and frequently better.
The Surfer is currently in cinemas.
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