The Surfer

"Surfer" is a baffling cinematic misfire with a weak script and a storyline that starts off confusing and spirals into outright absurdity. Nicolas Cage delivers a performance that feels more unhinged than compelling, amplifying the film's overall strangeness rather than anchoring it. The plot lacks coherence, the dialogue is awkward, and the emotional beats fall flat. Even the visuals and pacing fail to redeem the experience. What might have aimed for surrealism ends up feeling unintentionally unsubstantial and painfully self-indulgent. Save yourself the time and money-this one isn't worth the watch.

Saw this Friday night with my wife, and it has since been marinating in the back of my mind. I generally view this to be the mark of a good film. When I find myself several days later still pondering the story, the performances, the cinematography, and the overall message of what I watched it is inarguable that the finished movie turned out to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Come for Nick Cage (if you're a fan) but don't be disappointed by his more subdued turn. This is not the fully unhinged Nick we saw turned loose in Mandy, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, or Wild at Heart. This is a more nuanced descent into his patented insanity. It's a 30 year old scotch that will lingers on your palate instead of a tart and briny ale that is all but forgotten by the time you set the bottle down. At various times you'll find yourself asking what's real and what may be hallucination as his character suffers to prove his worthiness.

And that gorgeous slice of coast is a character in its own right as the coveted azure blue waves languidly rolling in to the pristine locals only beach under the brutal and unrelenting Australian sun that turns everything into a hazy mirage. Just steps off the beach waits the real world that the group viciously keeps at bay, dead rats, used crack pipes and condoms, the detritus and garbage swept clean of their little protected turf but there all along. Cage and 'the bum' are the human trash that Julian McMahon's alpha male guru cult leader cannot allow to threaten this little paradise.

You may wonder in the final moments what was real and what was imagined, and find yourself wondering what interpretation was intended for the viewer. Was Cage the bum all along? How much of what Nick's unnamed Surfer experienced was literal, and how much was the feverish working of a broken man's mind grasping unsuccessfully at the past? Director Lorcan Finnegan asks of you: what would you suffer to share your greatest joy and family history with your son, and what would you suffer if your son was lost to you?

Being married to an Australian surfer in his late sixties we found this movie pathetic. The script, the culture, the acting. There was nothing good to say about this movie except Nicholas Chae managed to see most Australia native animals. A thing that many Australians would never see.

My husband grew up surfing through the 60s and 70s and still surfs today. It is sad to see this movie represent the Australian culture this way. It may be what happens in America. Yes there was localism, bullies and drugs, but never to this extreme. To make it look like a cult initiation is so far from anything I have ever experienced.

An hour and a half of our lives we will never get back.

The story unfolds with Cage arriving at a beach that holds great significance to him. However, when he's ridiculed and forbidden from surfing there with his son, it triggers a series of events that progressively detach from reality, leaving the audience to question even the reality we a witnessing.

One aspect I appreciate is the exploration of the sunken cost fallacy, the tendency to persist with an endeavor we've invested in, even if the current costs outweigh the benefits. Having recently faced a similar decision, I understand how challenging it is to step back and accept a loss.

Watching this in the GL Theatre with Cage and the rest of the crew was a very enjoyable experience.😄

My daughter took me to see this movie as an 02 freebie and we weren't sure what to expect. We still weren't really sure what we thought after we had seen it either but it wasn't good. I am an avid movie fan and thought the acting, cinematography and location were all superb. There is definitely an interesting idea of a story somewhere in here but it never really manages to emerge. The movie seems to drift between several different possible storylines and or outcomes. You keep hoping there will be a moment of revelation that explains it all, but that just doesn't really happen.

My advice, would be don't bother, there are better things to do with a couple of hours nearly, like cleaning an oven.