Lorcan Finnegan’s ‘The Surfer’ offers existential waves but no real ride—just a slow drift toward meaninglessness, despite a strong Nicolas Cage performance.
By Sarah G. Vincent/Boston Movie News
“The Surfer” stars Nicolas Cage as the title character, a man who returns to Luna Beach in Australia, where he grew up before moving to the U.S., to surf with his son, known as The Kid (Finn Little). Scally (Julian McMahon) and his verging-on-interchangeable disciples, the Bay Boys, are not in the Christmas spirit and roughly turn them away. “Don’t live here. Don’t surf here.” After taking his son home, he returns and parks his car until he gets what he wants, but things escalate, and everything begins to unravel for The Surfer, including his sense of self. Will he lose everything, including his soul? Two people at the screening walked out in the middle, and they were the smart ones because that is the movie’s lesson. They did not need to watch it, and neither do you.
If you don’t watch many films, “The Surfer” might feel mind-blowing. But for seasoned moviegoers, it could be a tedious watch. We’re in the era of the recent “Opus” and “Gazer,” where filmmakers either lack original stories or get overwhelmed by their reverence for the masters. These filmmakers love movies and visually understand the craft, but are too close to the line between homage and rip-off. What do you, as an individual filmmaker, have to say to your audience that only you can tell? Absolutely nothing in the case of this movie. “The Surfer” spells everything out to such a literal degree or is so familiar, even as a creative choice, that the whole affair gets rapidly boring with no end in sight. If the film has any real value, it lies in denying viewers the catharsis promised by the trailer—there’s no satisfying revenge or clean resolution. Violence isn’t the answer here, so consider yourself warned. There is no satisfaction at the end, just a numbness at what people are willing to sacrifice for fleeting happiness. Do not conflate an abundance of analysis for praise from the author, but if it validates what made you love the movie, have at it!
For an Australian film, “The Surfer” is sedate and tame compared to films like 2010’s “Animal Kingdom” or 2011’s “The Snowtown Murders,” which it is not trying to be. This film harkens back to an earlier, colorful, primal period of Australian cinema, unlike the gritty grayness of the 21st century. In this film, that colorfulness feels unreal, which amplifies the oneiric, delusional, or heightened emotional tone. If you are a person who hates ambiguous films, you will hate this film. One fact is immutable: The Surfer is a man, and he was happier when he surfed and lived there. Everything else is up for grabs. Is he a father and a successful businessman on the verge of achieving everything? Is he actually in crisis and not as successful as he initially appears because he is an unreliable narrator? Or is he dead and having a “Jacob’s Ladder” fever dream to make sense of it all before entering the light? It does not matter because all theories work thanks to director Lorcan Finnegan’s montages, which include somewhat subliminal scenes that are not a part of the overall sequence such as a flash of a body while people are talking or The Surfer’s face cut rapidly to The Bum (Nicholas Cassim), who lives in his car in the parking lot, before returning the moviegoer’s gaze to The Surfer. He is all of them, and none of them, as a kind of desperate, eternal everyman whose identity slips based on his external circumstances because his identity is rooted in external markers.
“The Surfer” is better than “The Joker,” but not by much. Both protagonists exist to be tortured so their stories can comment on society. Writer Thomas Martin seems to start with society, then reverse engineers a protagonist and the scenario, so it arrives at the conclusion he wants instead of telling a person’s story and taking a journey where the end is a surprise even to the writer. Men are treated like some beast that must be studied in the wild. Even successful men like The Surfer are vulnerable to becoming The Bum or their fathers because of their inability to let go of the past, to move on and act. They are obsessed with getting validated or supported, thus imagining all the conspiracies against them.
While some of the characters have names within the movie even if it is not listed in the credits, the sole unchanging character is Scally (ugh, why not Scully). He is one of those manosphere thought-cult leaders who spouts bullshit about how to be successful in the white collar, civilized world by embracing their animal side, and only he can strip them down to build them back up into a successful man designed in his own image. It is wild to think how that movement started with appropriation and was comparatively gentler with men like poet Robert Bly leading the way with drum circles and sweat lodges. In Scally’s image, it is not that different from colonialism. A public resource is de facto converted into a private resource for people who already have plenty—a phenomenon that is occurring in real life anywhere with oceanfront property. Human beings who can be individuals and do not need validation are required to go through the mill of harsh supremacist culture and become like them if they want to enjoy nature.
At its core, it’s a story about white men who are either excluded or included in a rigid system and struggle to challenge that system without resorting to the tools that uphold it. The ones who are out want in, and like the ones who are in, want to hurt anyone who offends them to prove that they matter. Because they lack meaningful connections to their cultural roots, these men often try to fill that gap, not by reclaiming their heritage, but by appropriating land and piecing together a mix of symbolic gestures: baptisms, drug use, face painting. The result is a kind of tribal drag. It’s important to note that everyone comes from a culture, not defined by whiteness or maleness, but shaped by specific countries, towns, and family histories. These origins may feel distant or obsolete, but they form the real cultural context of a person’s life.
Don’t forget that “The Surfer” is set in Australia—a country founded in the 19th century by exiles and colonizers. Rather than learning from the violence that drove them from their homelands, many early settlers repeated those cycles of harm, this time against the continent’s Indigenous people, the Aborigines. It’s no accident that the only character who treats The Surfer with unconditional humanity is The Photographer (Miranda Tapsell), an Aboriginal woman. Unlike others, she doesn’t demand he prove his worth or treat him as a project. Instead, she offers a quiet truth: “You need to forget this place. You’re just not meant to be here.”
This sound advice is the lesson of “The Surfer,” but it is embedded in a scenario that puts the moviegoer in the shoes of people who cosign Scally’s system, a world that theoretically, we already belong in and know the rules, which is why it is not enjoyable to watch. There is no revelation or discovery. It is monotonous, and then it does not dare to embrace its bleakness but offer an inadequate sop of redemption, which could be delusional. No, thank you. There is no point in choosing your own adventure if all roads lead to the soul-deadening plot. The real innovation is imagining utopia.
‘The Surfer’
Rating: R for language, suicide, some violence, drug content and sexual material.
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim, Miranda Tapsell, Alexander Bertrand, Justin Rosniak
Director: Lorcan Finnegan
Writer: Thomas Martin
Running time: 103 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters May 2
Grade: C
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