Whisper House Press

Film Title: The Surfer

Director: Lorcan Finnegan

Writer: Thomas Martin

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Finn Little, Rahel Romahn

USA Wide Release Date: May 2, 2025

Capone’s Rating: 5⭐ out of 5⭐

A few things ran through my mind as I watched The Surfer. The first was “What the fuck did I get myself into?” The second: “This is beautiful.” The third: “What the fucking fuck?” I’d seen the trailer (once) and had decided then I needed to see this movie. But why? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember. But there I was. And I was weirded out… but intrigued. Fascinated. Spellbound.

The experience has percolated overnight, and I’m enjoying the movie more in retrospect than I did while I sat squirming. Watching Nicolas Cage get manhandled by a group of ruffians reminiscent of nothing so much as the biker gang in the original Mad Max was unpleasant. I felt what The Surfer (credited character name) felt, and it was scary. This was social horror in the sense I meant it in my call for submissions for Costs of Living a bit over a year ago.

The setup: Nic Cage is The Surfer in The Surfer, which opens with a dad giving his kid a surfing-as-metaphor life-lesson speech. The gist is that sometimes you’ve gotta leave behind your responsibilities and just enjoy life—grab it and hold it. Let the wave take you. And so on. And they arrive at Luna Bay, the beach of The Surfer’s childhood (and apparently a place of vague, faraway trauma—and thank god this isn’t another trauma-porn horror flick where the trauma is the whole story). He remembers it so fondly that he’s planned a surprise for his son (The Kid), a boy of maybe fifteen who’s clearly less enthusiastic than his father of leaving the world behind in favor of a rip tide and the curl of a tenuously caught wave. But he’s there. He’s trying to accommodate his dad, since his dad is obviously so messed up about his recent (or impending?) divorce from The Kid’s mother.

But redemption is here at Luna Bay. The MacGuffin in The Surfer is a place. We see the waves, the sunsets, the joy everyone in the water gets from just being in that place. The place means peace, freedom, a return to innocence or childhood (for The Surfer)… but he cannot have it. He and The Kid are turned away by a pack of rabid locals spouting their mantra, “Don’t live here, don’t surf here.” The Surfer is an outsider, despite having grown up on that beach. He clearly doesn’t belong: He’s got fancy shades, a Lexus, and a tailored suit. He’s told to be on his way. He really doesn’t appreciate being told he doesn’t belong. He commits. He returns after driving his son home to the boy’s mother, and he doesn’t leave. He will surf that beach. No matter what it takes. And he’ll get back his family home up on Hillcrest Drive (or whatever it was). He suffers. He deteriorates. He loses his grip, as do we along with him.

I mentioned above that the film is beautiful. It is. Looks to be shot on 35mm film, though I’m far from expert (it seems to be shot on some kind of film, anyway). Props to Cinematographer Radek Ładczuk (who also shot The Babadook, a personal favorite and early and successful entry into the trauma porn sub-genre of sad horror movies). Credit here is clearly also due to Film Editor Tony Cranstoun (who also edited Vivarium, a Whisper House Press favorite and a film also directed by Lorcan Finnegan). Composer François Tétaz provides a backdrop of music as unique as the work of Jonny Greenwood in the films he scores. (I wonder if I’ll recognize his stuff in the future as I do Greenwood’s.) Aza Hand’s sound design (he of Kneecap and Oddity fame) frames our aural exposures in just such a way as to further magnify our discomfort or peace, as the moment demands.

The ambiance and environs of Yallingup, Australia also play a key role here. Bush rats, locusts, and even a kangaroo make appearances, playing Greek choir to this filmic tragedy, interregna to increasingly discomforting suffering and physical change on the part of our sad, sad hero. There are a lot of shots in the form of quick cuts—maybe a few frames but more not so few as to be only subconsciously perceptible—of creeping animals or of a face in the foliage, of one character superimposed onto another character’s former visage… The audience is carried along into The Surfer’s worsening condition.

By the time we find out whether or not our protagonist is going to get what he yearns for, what he’s sacrificed so much for, what will assuredly solve everything, we are confused, frightened, and angry. The film is a capped bottle, and the cathartic smashing of that bottle is what we want. Things could very easily go the wrong way.

This film is worth your time, and it’s a masterpiece for its creative team—but I know there are a lot of folks out there who will hate this movie for its weirdness and discomfiture.

For the record: This is far from the most bonkers Nic Cage movie I’ve seen. That title goes to Sion Sono’s Prisoners of the Ghostland, which my family and I enjoyed thoroughly about half a decade ago at Sundance—as of May 2025, you can watch this extraordinary film if you’ve got an AMC+ subscription. And you should. You should watch it today.