THE SURFER (2024)

A man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. When he is humiliated by a group of locals, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising and pushes him to his breaking point.

In The Surfer, director Lorcan Finnegan crafts a brooding psychological descent disguised as a surf drama. What begins as a film about a man revisiting his roots swiftly shifts into a feverish nightmare of humiliation, obsession, and endurance. While the backdrop may be the sun-bleached beaches of Australia, this film is far from a celebration of waves and freedom. Instead, it explores the dark undercurrents of localism, male pride, and the strange rituals we create to protect what we believe is ours. And although it boasts sharp cinematography and unrelenting atmosphere, The Surfer ultimately struggles under the weight of its own metaphors and slow-burn pacing.

Nicolas Cage plays a nameless man we'll refer to as “The Surfer,” a dishevelled office worker returning to his childhood town in an effort to buy back the family home perched above the very beach he once loved. Hoping the purchase will help repair his strained relationship with his teenage son (Finn Little), the man sets out to share a simple moment: watching the waves together from the water. What he encounters instead is outright hostility.

The beach, once a site of nostalgia and joy, is now guarded by a gang of self-appointed enforcers who call themselves the Bay Boys. Led by the unnervingly charismatic Scally (Julian McMahon), the group has turned this stretch of sand into a hostile frontier, complete with its own rituals and violent gatekeeping. “You don't live here — you don’t surf here,” the Surfer is told, and from that point forward, the tone of the film spirals into surreal torment.

From this moment, The Surfer becomes less a story about familial redemption and more an allegory about masculinity, power, and psychological erosion. The beach functions as both a physical space and a symbolic battleground. One man’s attempt to reconnect becomes a descent into madness, driven by an escalating cycle of intimidation and degradation. His possessions, one-by-one, all vanish. With each loss, he becomes less a father and more a ghost of his former self, clinging to a past that no longer welcomes him.

Visually, Finnegan makes the most of the film’s minimalist setting. The use of shoulder-mounted shots, disorienting cuts, and off-kilter camera angles lend the story a trance-like quality. Static wides and split diopter shots capture both the expanse of the beach and the tightening grip of paranoia. It’s a well-shot film with deliberate choices – lens flares exaggerate the oppressive sun, and a colour palette drenched in sunburnt tones heightens the sense of feverish dislocation. The beach, for all its natural beauty, becomes a purgatory of sorts — alluring and inescapable.

Sound design plays a pivotal role in escalating the tension. Whether it’s the mocking laughter of the Bay Boys or the persistent roar of the sea, audio is weaponised to unsettle. The soundtrack pulses with dread. Combined with the harsh editing, the film is constructed to be uncomfortable — a deliberate, grating sensory assault that mirrors the Surfer’s unraveling mental state.

But at the heart of this slow-motion breakdown is Cage. Surprisingly restrained for most of the film’s runtime, his performance teeters on the edge of eruption. This is not the wild-eyed, unhinged Cage that audiences may be expecting. Here, he plays it with weary desperation. While that may show range, it’s also a key reason the film feels incomplete. The build-up to catharsis is long — painfully so — and when the climax does arrive, it’s fleeting. Instead of the visceral release the narrative seems to promise, we get a half-hearted lurch that leaves many threads unresolved.

There’s a deliberate cruelty to The Surfer, one that forces both its protagonist and its audience to sit with discomfort. Finnegan and writer Thomas Martin appear less interested in redemption or resolution and more in examining what people are willing to endure in order to reclaim some imagined sense of place or identity. In this way, the film interrogates entitlement – not just to land or tradition, but to emotional rewards, family, even legacy. It’s about men who lack cultural grounding and seek belonging through performance: face painting, brutal initiations, and macho theatrics. The beach becomes less a surf haven and more a coliseum for fragile egos and tribal posturing.

There are brief moments of pitch-black humour – a scene involving a dead rat, for instance, toes the line between horror and absurdity – but these do little to offset the bleakness. The film’s core obsession is suffering. Every moment is engineered to strip the Surfer bare — physically, mentally, spiritually. He is humiliated in front of his son, scorned by police, derided by the locals, and even attacked by animals. It’s a modern-day Job story dressed in boardshorts and drenched in salt and sunburn.

But therein lies the film’s greatest weakness: the suffering, while visceral and well-executed, becomes repetitive. With each indignity, the audience grows more numb. Without a sharp pivot or emotional shift, the prolonged agony becomes tedious. And because the film offers no clean payoff, no dramatic resolution, the tension simply dissipates. For viewers hoping for a classic Cage rampage — a fireball finale or howling monologue — the restraint may feel like a missed opportunity.

Ultimately, The Surfer is a film that respects its themes too much to cheapen them with easy answers. It’s a grim meditation on alienation, obsession, and the destructive pull of toxic masculinity — all explored through the metaphor of a man who can’t walk away from a beach that no longer wants him. It’s technically impressive, atmospherically rich, and ambitious in concept. But it’s also punishing to watch. It offers no relief, no triumph, no real transformation — just sunburnt purgatory and the cost of holding on too tightly.

For dedicated cinephiles, especially those intrigued by psychological horror and experimental narratives, The Surfer is a challenging but worthwhile experience. For mainstream audiences, it may feel like an endurance test. And for fans of Nicolas Cage, the biggest frustration might be that the actor never truly unleashes the chaos he's capable of.

A visually rich and thematically layered descent into madness, The Surfer offers a harsh take on localism, masculinity, and identity. But its commitment to bleakness, combined with an underwhelming climax, may leave many viewers stranded at sea.

The Surfer is screened as part of the Terror-Fi Film Festival

Runtime: 100 minutes
Classification: R16