The Surfer (dir. Lorcan Finnegan)

by Jack Martin | May 7, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 100 mins

UK Distributor: Vertigo Releasing

UK Release Date: 9 May 2025

WHO’S IN THE SURFER?

Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim, Miranda Tapsell, Alexander Bertrand, Justin Rosniak, Rahel Romahn, Finn Little, Charlotte Maggi

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Lorcan Finnegan (director), Thomas Martin (writer), Nicolas Cage, Brunella Cocchiglia, Robert Connolly, Leonora Darby, James Grandison, James Harris and Nathan Klingher (producers), François Tétaz (composer), Radek Ladczuk (cinematographer), Tony Cranstoun (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A businessman (Cage) descends into madness when he’s denied access to the beach…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON THE SURFER?

Over the years, Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan has made a habit out of psychologically tormenting his lead actors, whether it’s trapping Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots inside of a suburban nightmare in Vivarium, or subjecting Eva Green to the strange practises of a Filipino witch in Nocebo. But in a slightly unusual twist, the lead of his latest film The Surfer happens to be the king of psychological torment. Nicolas Cage, known the world over for memorable roles where the phrase “over-the-top” doesn’t even begin to describe his commitment to delivering some truly out-there performances, is more than capable of playing a character undergoing a severe cerebral experience to the point of flat-out insanity, making him a perfect fit for Finnegan’s consistently unusual universe.

Yet The Surfer, for its intriguing set-up and even many of its ideas, often threatens to buckle under the weight of its own ambition, subjecting viewers to as much frustration as the titular protagonist is.

Cage plays the unnamed surfer, an American-accented Australian businessman – cos, y’know, Cage – who takes his teenage son (Finn Little) to the beach where he grew up, intending to purchase his childhood home and, more importantly, to ride the waves that once made him feel alive as a kid. Almost immediately, though, they’re prevented from entering the water by a band of boisterous locals and their leader Scally (Julian McMahon), who ferociously forbid anyone who doesn’t live in the area to surf on their beach. Determined to surf no matter what, the surfer starts to lose his grip on reality as the locals push him further and further to the brink, first by stealing his surfboard and using it as the sign for their clubhouse, then by taking everything he owns from his car to his phone, and eventually by convincing him that not only is he not who he thinks he is, but might actually be a homeless Bum (Nic Cassim) whom he regularly envisions to have his own agenda against Scally and his toxic cult of bullies.

In short, The Surfer is a film about someone being horrifically gaslit for just over an hour and a half, all for the crime of wanting to ride a few waves. In that sense, the film can be particularly uncomfortable to watch, since Cage’s character is frequently subjected to physical and psychological abuse so severe that you almost wonder why, after everything he goes through, he’s still dead-set on purchasing a place to live in this obnoxious hellhole. Finnegan, working from a script by Thomas Martin, regularly struggles to entrap the audience in a similar mindset as Cage in this film, because while the director certainly has a flair for trippy reality-bending imagery, utilising such visual tools as wide-angle camera lenses and wavy filters to mimic the character’s mental degradation amidst the relentless heat, he can’t distract from the growing lack of logic in Martin’s writing that causes one to continuously question certain character motivations and plot beats.

The film works best when it’s not trying so hard to be an endless pit of mind-fuckery and is just focused on the increasingly crazy things that Cage finds himself doing in order to keep his ever-fading dream alive. The actor is firing on all cylinders here, frequently – and unsurprisingly – nailing his character’s frequent slips into madness as he takes liberties such as drinking dirty water to stay hydrated and at one point even coming close to chewing on the corpse of a rat. His manic energy is palpable, to a point where it wouldn’t come as a shock if he just suddenly decided to bring out his inner Caster Troy from Face/Off by the end of his on-screen ordeal, against this strange cult of toxic masculinity as led by its very own Jordan Peterson figure, a role in which Julian McMahon is way more intimidating than he ever was as Doctor Doom. But even at his lowest moment, Cage still makes his character’s odd personal goal something that you do still want to see come to fruition, because his passion is never in question and neither is his commitment to going through hell and back just to achieve what he wants.

However, Finnegan’s film is ultimately a bit of a sprawling affair, focusing a bit too much on the mean-spiritedness of the situation rather than examining the weighty themes behind it all. There’s certainly a lot to unpack here, whether it’s in the strange localist mentality of McMahon’s tribe or the threat of wealthy outsiders like Cage coming in to potentially gentrify the area, but it rarely stops to ponder much of these things in favour of more gaslighting which, again, makes the ensuing chaos less easy to stomach. If there was perhaps more cohesion to particular elements then perhaps The Surfer wouldn’t be as frustrating an experience, which isn’t to say that you can’t ever have ambiguity in a film, especially a psychological thriller such as this, but for the viewer to truly lose themselves in the insanity as Cage does at numerous junctions in this movie, certain things still have to make sense for it to feel like the mental labyrinth it clearly wants to be.

While it isn’t an awful film by any means, nor is it conceptually that bad, The Surfer is muddled to a point where you do start to lose focus as it brings itself closer to an admittedly intriguing climax, by which point it may be too late for you to fully catch the waves that this film is constantly pushing toward you.

SO, TO SUM UP…

The Surfer is a trippy but frustrating psychological thriller that, despite a committed-as-ever lead turn by Nicolas Cage, lacks the required logical writing and focus on its weightier themes to be much more than a rather uncomfortable gaslighting session with some overly nasty vibes that are hard to wash away.