Anyone approaching the new thriller “The Surfer” (opening in theaters Friday) and expecting “Endless Summer”-style swells, wipeouts and shakas will leave disappointed. There is very little surfing in “The Surfer.” For the title character, played by Nicolas Cage, the label is little more than an aspiration thwarted by hostile surroundings.
It’s a homecoming of sorts for his otherwise nameless character, who is introducing his teenage son to the stretch of Australian beach where he was raised. But for this separated, soon to be divorced father, the trip is about more than waves and sentiment: He has his eyes, and copious wallet, set on purchasing the million-dollar home overlooking the ocean that once belonged to his grandfather.
These early scenes, full of promise and a twinkly score straight out of a Disney movie, soon give way to a nasty strain of localism. The beachfront, while technically public, is run by, in the words of an onlooker, “yuppies cosplaying at being surf gangsters”—aggro white men with trust funds and chips on their sunburned shoulders, whose desire to prohibit tourists on their swath of paradise does not preclude violence. Cage’s character, a bit of a yuppie himself who drives a Lexus and holds a cushy white-collar job back home, doesn’t seek a fight but also ignores repeated warnings to leave well enough alone, determined to stand his ground in the sand even at the risk of his belongings, his wealth, his health and ultimately his sanity.
Localism is a genuine and specific problem in the surf world, but writer-director Lorcan Finnegan finds analogues beyond the rituals of the salt life, exploring the outer limits of manosphere culture. Scally (Julian McMahon) is the cultlike leader of the “Bay Boys” tribe, espousing a misogynistic worldview, branding initiates with hot pokers, and flippantly accusing people like Cage’s character of being a “pedo” while welcoming the company of underage girls into his own bed.
Finnegan has done his homework on the playbook of the Andrew Tates of the world while also nodding to the psychological thrillers of yore. Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs,” another pitch-black allegory on the breakdown of Civilized Man, flashes quickest to mind, though “The Surfer” is an even more astringent study of the precariousness of cosmopolitan creature comforts. It’s a ‘70s-style cautionary tale with a contemporary sociopolitical edge.
Stylistically, Finnegan also nods to this formative era of grindhouse and cult cinema, filling his frame with close-ups of eyes and mouths and contrasting them with images of nature’s brutal indifference: forests and beachfronts that ripple in the unceasing heat, snakes and rats clearly living their best life vis a vis Cage. Even the birds seem to be laughing at Cage’s folly.
So why doesn’t Cage just give up and leave? Perhaps “The Surfer” is as much about man’s stubbornness as it is the casual cruelty of nativism. For this character, the lure of nostalgia—of the return to a better life that’s seemingly as close as the glistening turquoise sea—is as blinding as the sun.
Is “The Surfer” for everyone? Certainly not. Its unpleasantness is amplified to such extremes that many will rightly prefer to turn away. The film’s subtext, meanwhile, about a reckoning between Cage’s surfer and the suicide of his father on this very beach, feels a bit half-baked and a bit pretentious. But the text is clear and powerful enough, and the title role, like several Cage has embraced of late—from “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” to “Longlegs”—plays perfectly to his frenzied, feral wheelhouse. It’s also nice to see a beach thriller in which sharks are nowhere to be found. The horror, it seems, lives within us.
“The Surfer” opens Friday, May 2 at Cinemark Palace in Boca Raton, Evo Entertainment in Delray Beach, and Regal Royal Palm in Royal Palm Beach.
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