The Surfer Review

We’re pretty comfortable with Lorcan Finnegan’s The Surfer. Through the dissonance of the off-key score, the glinting yet blinding sun, or the heavy saturation of the cinematography, Finnegan and Cage have crafted a psychological nightmare packaged up in the summery, picturesque Lunar Bay.

Cage attracts the B-movie now, and audiences are prepared for the outright strangeness and eccentricity that accompanies the less-mainstream horrors. Finnegan subverts this newly created expectation with a non-linear timeline, blurred lines between appearance and reality and the strangely well-fitting theme of surfing: all revolving around Nicolas Cage’s unnamed main character.

He is a desperate, humiliated and frantic middle-aged man who is driven solely by his desire to buy the house he once lived in with his father, although he seems unable to bring the funds to the table. The stress of potentially losing this home, the disconnect he feels with his son and the clearly turbulent relationship he has with his love of surfing all contribute to an extremely stressful viewing experience.

It’s hard to say what The Surfer is about. You could argue, thanks to the inclusion of the plotline around an alpha male ringleader of a cult called the Lunar Beach Boys (yes, you read that correctly), that this is a film about masculinity. In an online climate where most conversations around the alpha male revolve around a younger, more impressionable generation, Finnegan demonstrates how the obsessive addiction with image, strength and vitality plagues even the middle-aged main character as he battles with a sense of belonging and outsider syndrome.

There’s often enjoyment in the abstractness of films like these, where you’re not quite sure what is happening as you approach the credits. However, at times, Finnegan’s non-linear narrative is hard to access and can leave you feeling incomplete rather than changed. You’re stressed, you’re frustrated, you’re confused: and when that has little payoff, you’re disappointed. Nevertheless, the journey that we take to the underwhelming third act of the film – which was arguably twenty minutes too long – is ed by Cage’s potently hot-blooded and eager acting. Cage’s eccentric performances have received some harsh criticism in the past few projects he’s taken on, but there’s no doubting that he stepped up to the absurdity that Finnegan channels with The Surfer.

★★★

Played part of 2025 Glasgow Film Festival | Coming UK Cinemas May 2025 | Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nicholas Cassim, Justin Rosniak / Dir: Lorcan Finnegan / Vertigo Releasing / 15