If I were to make a list of my favorite Nicolas Cage films, the top tier would certainly include “Vampire’s Kiss” (1988), perhaps the strongest indication that he would probably not become anyone’s idea of a conventional leading man. In it, he played an outwardly successful man who, following a fateful incident at a favorite haunt, finds his life spiraling out of control in such bizarre and grotesque ways that we can never be entirely certain that what we are watching is actually happening to him or if it is all in his rapidly disintegrating mind. It was a dazzling high-wire act that deftly blended jet-black comedy with an insightful depiction of mental illness, anchored by a performance from Cage so singular you cannot imagine any other actor going to those kinds of extremes.
Now, nearly 40 years (and considerably more than a hundred films) later, comes “The Surfer,” a film in which Cage does it all over again. The result may interest Cage scholars who might be fascinated by the parallels between this one and “Vampire’s Kiss” and the chance to see him tackle such a similar role at this point in his long and strange career. On the other hand, those without that level of investment are more likely to find it a strange and not entirely successful cinematic freak-out that has its moments thanks to another unique turn from Cage, but never quite figures out how to pull them all together into a reasonably satisfying whole.
Cage plays a man who grew up in a small town on the Australian coastline until a family tragedy sent him to the U.S. for several decades. As the film opens, he has returned home at last and is driving with his son (Finn Little) with two purposes in mind—to take the boy to surf the waves he used to ride long ago and show him the home that used to belong to his family that he is currently negotiating to repurchase. When they arrive at the beach, however, they are prevented from reaching the water by the Bay Boys, a group of self-styled surf punk bullies under the tutelage and thrall of local bigwig Scally (Julian McMahon)—the only character afforded something resembling a name—who chant “Don’t live here, don’t surf here” and terrorize anyone who tries to violate that edict. Although the man tries to protest that he is actually from there, his claims fall on deaf ears, and he is rejected in a particularly humiliating fashion.
Although the son soon takes off, the man is determined (in ways explained via several flashbacks) to surf this spot, and so he stays in the parking lot, surveying what is going on at the beach while plotting his next move. As the days seemingly blend together under the blazing heat, the man finds himself tormented by various Bay Boys, persecuted by other locals, and ritualistically stripped of his money, possessions, and dignity. Eventually, he is reduced to scrounging for food (even contemplating snacking on a dead rat he comes across at one point) and drinking brown water from a bathroom tap (and eventually puddles on the ground) while regressing to a near-feral state. Of course, he could just leave. But something deep down is driving him to stay to confront his oppressors. So he does, drifting further into madness until the inevitable confrontation with Scally and the Bay Boys.
The set-up for “The Surfer” is promising, I suppose, but the film doesn’t quite know what to do with it. In the early going, Thomas Martin’s screenplay seems like an exploration of mid-life desperation and toxic masculinity. Still, it doesn’t seem to have much of anything meaningful or insightful on those subjects. Instead, we get a seemingly endless midsection in which the humiliations loaded upon the man grow repetitive before arriving at a conclusion that attempts to evoke the final scenes of “Taxi Driver” by combining brutal violence and ironic catharsis, but doesn’t quite pull it off. For his part, director Lorcan Finnegan (whose previous films have included the equally bizarre “Vivarium” (2019) and “Nocebo” (2022)) does a good job at first in putting us in the Cage character’s increasingly sunbaked mindset and evoking a certain discomfiting tension. But he also begins to lose his way at a certain point, as the project devolves from a potentially penetrating psychological thriller into something resembling a feature-length meme.
As with most of his films, the primary thing driving “The Surfer” is Cage’s performance and the curiosity over exactly how far over-the-top he will be going throughout its running time. As is also the case with most of those films, his work is the best thing about it. Yes, there are plenty of bizarro moments that are sure to turn up in YouTube clip reels before too long, but this isn’t simply a case of him going weird for the sake of being weird. Instead, he seems focused on charting his character’s anguish at having rebuilt himself after a humiliating past tragedy, possibly losing it all again, and how his determination to keep that from happening only hastens his descent. There is also a good supporting turn from McMahon as Scally, a man who has figured out how to take his most odious qualities and make them into socially acceptable assets.
Ultimately, “The Surfer” proves to be not much more than an audience endurance test that offers up plenty of upsetting imagery and moments of emotional torment but never quite manages to make them pay off. Still, as nutso Nicolas Cage projects go, it is certainly more ambitious and interesting than such recent misfires as the aforementioned “Gunslingers” and the inexplicably overpraised “Longlegs.” However, if you want to see a film that deals with a number of the same themes on display here, only handled in ways that are both more psychologically resonant and infinitely funnier, I advise you once again to seek out “Vampire’s Kiss. ” Leave this one, like its protagonist, to bake on the beach.
