The Surfer (2025) review

Dir. Lorcan Finnegan

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

You can tell in the early minutes of The Surfer exactly where this movie is headed. Maybe not in terms of plot progression or resolve, but you know one thing is for sure: Nicolas Cage is bound to lose it. Early on, when his character loses his suit jacket, and then his shoes, you know he’s going to lose a whole more, sanity and all.

The overabundance of Cage movies has led to some gems (Pig) and some real duds (The Retirement Plan). It helps that The Surfer, directed by Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan, has plenty of style to spare. Set exclusively at an idyllic Australian beach, the color palette is intensely saturated, with the ocean appearing a deep blue, and the blinding sun seemingly committed to making the viewer sweat. The heat becomes an inextricable force of the film, as it did in the very-similar Falling Down and Do the Right Thing, strong points of comparison even if Finnegan’s film lacks the substantive commentary of those features. Cinematographer Radzek Ladczuk is clearly unafraid of intense closeup of Cage’s bloody visage, or the effects various Dutch angles ratchet up the intensity of the film.

Cage plays a man known only as “The Surfer,” and is near closing a deal on a hilltop estate in Australia, one that overlooks a nearby beach. It’s his childhood home; his father died when he was a teenager, and his mother took him to live in California, which is why nobody believes that the man is actually a native to the area. Initially, the father and son show up at Luna Bay in his Lexus with the intent to surf, but the beach is controlled by locals, led by Scally (Julian McMahon), who prohibit anyone who doesn’t live there from hitting the waves.

After taking his son home, the man returns to the beach hellbent on surfing, all while impatiently waiting for a phone-call from his broker trying to secure the $1.6 million necessary to buy the aforementioned home. The longer his efforts go on, the more things go wrong for our leading man, who is victim to theft and harassment, both verbal and physical, at the hands of surfer bros who control the area. Worst of all, the house he’s coveting receives an all-cash offer, putting a reunion with his childhood home in jeopardy. A local cop (Justin Rosniak) appears to be connected with the surfers, as he doesn’t help Cage once his surfboard is stolen. Later on, his phone runs out of battery and he can’t even buy a coffee and a pastry.

Ladczuk’s dreamlike visuals coupled with a hypnotic score suggest that Cage is losing his grip on reality. Eventually, the suit he’s wearing becomes dirty and tattered, and he starts resembling a cantankerous bum (Nicholas Cassim) that’s been wandering the beach in search of his missing dog. Why he can’t return to wherever he left his son is a mystery in itself. Something is preventing him from leaving the scalding hot asphalt of the parking lot, whether it’s the promise of owning his former childhood home, surfing, acceptance from the locals or some combination of the three.

Those who come to see Cage lose his mind will be awarded with a couple of memorable moments. He fills a water bottle with disgusting orangish-brown liquid from a bathroom faucet, and proceeds to choke it down. He ponders eating a dead rat, but then keeps it in his pocket as a companion of sorts, offering it up later (“Eat the rat!” being the line you’re waiting for). He finds a small nest of bird eggs, cracks them, and eats the raw yolks. Hallucinogenic imagery takes heed, with psychedelic shots of crashing waves, porcupines, and lizards interpolated with the portrait of a mopey man’s slow spiral into madness.

The Surfer arrives at an ending a little opaque for its own good, but throughout the film, Cage’s commitment makes you lean forward. Julian McMahon delivers a competent performance of unbridled, unchecked masculinity, and the editing, sort of remixed in a way, contributes a great deal when it comes to the unease it generates. The Wicker Man this isn’t, thankfully.

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim, Miranda Tapsell, Alexander Bertrand, Justin Rosniak, and Finn Little. Directed by: Lorcan Finnegan.