In effort to save his marriage, ex-pat Nicolas Cage returns to an idyllic western Australian beach community intent on catching waves with his son and purchasing the cliffside home of his youth. When his efforts are stymied by a gang of beach-bronzed locals led by cult-like figure Scally (Julian McMahon) and who are long-since hellbent on keeping the summer surf all to themselves ( their mantra: Don’t live here? Don’t surf here.). Our protagonist gets pushed to the breaking point and does what he does best: he freaks the f*** out! THE SURFER evokes the hard-boiled and heat-drenched forebearers of Australian noir — WAKE IN FRIGHT and WOLF CREEK come to mind, as well as aspects of U.S. cousin THE LOST BOYS — and ratchets things up with the presence of the very essence of explosive volatility that is Nicolas Cage. Having premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and relaunched with fanfare at this spring’s South by Southwest, THE SURFER is here and ready to take what’s his.
“A very nice slice of Australia set psychosis, and from the get-go, the signs are good, with its delicious 1970s title card echoing the opening credits of Anna Biller’s similarly retro THE LOVE WITCH. But where Biller teased us with a riot of female sexuality, here, director Lorcan Finnegan serves a scorching return volley of bronzed and murderous men…. The film bottles beautifully the neo-noir lightning that flashes down under from time to time, with its thrilling presentation of a remote beach town that has gone seriously wrong.” —Perry Norton, Film Threat “As the Surfer’s transformation takes place over the course of the film, Cage throws himself whole-hog into the role, putting himself through every kind of excruciating torment imaginable… Finnegan constantly proves that he has a strong grasp of the visual language of an exploitation film, and keeps its trippy turn within the realm of the genre — upping the heat haze that seems to penetrate every frame of the film, and embedding us in the Surfer’s crazed mind with wacky hallucinations and dreamy visions.” —Hoai-Trun Bui, Inverse
