Movie review – The Surfer

This film has zero advertising and it was by luck that I caught the trailer in front of The Shrouds last weekend that I even knew about it. I never miss a Nicolas Cage film, especially now in his renascence era. It’s hard to talk about without spoilers, so if you would rather not know what happens, stop now.

Cage plays a father attempting to buy his childhood home on the Australian Coast. He visits the beach nearby with his son to break the news but they are met with angry Aussie locals who believe that visitors are not allowed there. His son leaves, but Cage’s character descends into days long madness as he quarrels with the locals.

This film leaves intentional ambiguity around the main character who doesn’t even have a name in the film. As he stays at the beach for days, the cult like gang of boys and men who control the beach gaslight him into believing he is crazy. That he isn’t who he says he is. They even hid his car from him.

There is a lot to unpack about toxic masculinity here as these teenagers and their middle age leader bully any visitor who attempts to surf. Their bravado is made worse by their herd mentality, blindly following a man with control issues. No questions this reality except Cage who only wants to surf but is not allowed to.

As Cage tries to take control of this situation back, his demeanor suggests that the obsession with surfing at his childhood beach stems from feeling like he has no control over his life. His wife is marrying someone else, and is pregnant. His son is disinterested in spending time with him. Somehow, surfing would take back something his life is lacking. Surfing is a metaphor for a sense of calm and completion that he is missing in life and it’s why he so desperately wants to buy the house nearby. It would allow him to take back control in his life.

There’s a bum living at the beach who is strikingly similar to Cage’s character, and holds a grudge against the cult leader. The parallels between Cage and the bum last until the end of the movie when the bum shows up with a gun. The ending suggests even more than the rest of the film that it was all in Cage’s head, or that he may already be dead and repeating the events in some beach version of purgatory. Visually, he hallucinates and sees flashes of the events playing out throughout the film like he is remembering fragments that already happened.

The only thing that keeps this from making sense is a photographer who had taken his photograph, and later shows it to him to prove that he is real. That he did have his own car. That he isn’t the bum after all. That he isn’t making it up.

This is the kind of movie that you want to watch more than once just to see if you can pick up on any clues you may have missed. To see what wasn’t obvious during the first viewing.

The scenery is beautiful and Nicolas Cage is at his best as the surfer questions his reality before accepting it, and then questioning it again when he learns more details about the cult leader and the bum. This one is worth a viewing if you’re okay with ambiguity.

3.5 out if 5 stars.