THE SURFER - Mark Reviews Movies

The Surfer, Lionsgate / Roadside Attractions

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 1, 2025

It feels as if Thomas Martin's screenplay for The Surfer wants to have it all in terms of the story's execution. On one level, it's a thriller about a group of people gaslighting a man into believing that he is having a nervous breakdown or even that he isn't who he thinks he is.

On another, it's surreal psychological study of a man who actually is losing mind because his life hasn't added up to what wanted, on account of losing whatever he had left to some local bullies, and under the hot Australian sun at Christmastime. On yet another level, the entirety of the story might not even be comprehensible within the terms of how stories are usually told, so maybe the whole thing makes a kind of sense by way of not making a bit of logical, chronological sense.

The point, of course, is that it's difficult to care about anything that's happening in this movie when so little of it makes sense and so much of it might not mean to make any sense in the first place. Every time we think we have a handle on Martin's construction and director Lorcan Finnegan's filmmaking trickery, the script throws us for another loop. Eventually, the constant changing of the story's terms is more frustrating and repetitive than it is mind-bending.

From the start, the story seems simple enough. We meet an unnamed guy, referred to in the credits as "the Surfer" and played by Nicolas Cage, who just wants to take his son, known only as "the Kid" and played by Finn Little, surfing at a picturesque bay. The Surfer knows this place well, because he grew up here as a child with his parents on a house overlooking the beach. After the unexpected death of his father, a young the Surfer moved to New York City with his mother, which accounts for the different accent among his once-fellow local peers, but now that his marriage has failed and he's looking forward to retirement soon, the Surfer has jumped at a chance to buy his childhood home.

All of this background explains why the Surfer is so stubborn to surf with his son on this particular day and to not back down, even though basic self-preservation would probably be the better option. A local gang of surfers, called the Bay Boys and led by the charismatic Scally (Julian McMahon), tell the man to leave the beach immediately. According to them, surfing here is only for locals, and as much as the Surfer tries to explain that the two will be respectful and that he was a local at one point in his life, the gang keeps pushing, both figuratively and literally, until the Surfer ends up on his own in the parking lot with no intention of leaving before he has a chance to hit the water.

Initially, the whole scenario is quite tense, because the Bay Boys are a legitimate threat, made even more unnerving by being a sort of men's club that runs on Scally's philosophy that the only legitimate type of man is one who suffers and causes as much suffering to outsiders as possible, and the Surfer becomes caught up on the wrong side of that philosophical outlook. They don't just threaten to and actually assault him. They also start stealing his stuff, primarily his prized surfboard, which they claim has always been part of their club's collection when a local police officer (played by Justin Rosniak) shows up to investigate. The cop seems a little too chummy with the gang.

A lot more happens, of course. Some of it could just be bad luck, such as when the Surfer steps on broken glass after his shoes are stolen, but a lot of it, especially within this scenario, seems orchestrated by the Bay Boys to terrorize this man. A homeless man (played by Nic Cassim) warns the Surfer that the gang is legitimately dangerous, since they took his son and killed his dog, and as the heat and starvation and dehydration start to take their toll on him, a lot of folks start to think the Surfer is just some bum hanging out in the parking lot.

As Finnegan plays with time (There are flashes to the future or maybe, if the whole narrative is somehow disconnected from any chronological order, the past) and uses disjointed editing to make the narrative feel unconnected from what appears to be established reality, the movie does achieve a genuine sense of paranoia. Nothing the Surfer sees can be believed, either because the gang is coordinating some terrible mind game on him or on account of something else—his physical and mental deterioration, the possibility that he isn't the person he seems to be, the strange but still potential notion that this is just some sort of alternate reality—at play.

At a certain point, it becomes apparent that The Surfer isn't interested in answers, only in more and more questions about the nature of its own storytelling aims and methods. That Cage's performance often feels performative, as if he's putting on a show of shock and confusion and outrage, doesn't help ground our understanding of the character or these circumstances, either.

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