It’s starting to greatly amuse me now as to how many weirdo movies are being released these days that come complete with gushing, arthouse-style compliments when they’re just modern versions of classic, trash cinema. Last year we famously got the Oscar winning, body horror bonanza, The Substance, which took the lumpy, malformed likes of David Cronenberg and Frank Henenlotter and created a throwback masterpiece that was lauded by fan of both upscale and downscale cinema, however, with Lorcan Finnegan’s The Surfer, it’s time for the sub-genre lovingly known as Ozploitation to take its sunburnt bow with a UV lashed Nicolas Cage gradually going nuts.
That’s right, the lastest bout of Cage Rage comes with an Australian twang as we get a psychological thriller that takes the middle-aged meltdown of Falling Down and chucks in a hallucinogenic tone that take one of Cage’s previous freak outs, Mandy, and provides it with some beachfront property. Sandy, if you will…
Born in Australia, but raised in America after his father’s suicide, the man the film refered to in the credits as the eponymous Surfer, is desperate to try and reclaim the happier aspects of his life by trying to put a bid on the house he was born in. Seemingly convinced that returning to the idyllic beach town where he surfed on a stunning beach will heal a shattered marriage, a strained work life and a distant son (naturally labeled The Kid), the Surfer has obviously put all of his eggs in one basket and even before the nightmarish ordeal that about to before him starts, you can tell this guy is fraying fast.
Taking his son down to the beach where he surfed as a child, the Surfer is hoping to surprise his son with the stunning view of his (hopeful) new house while riding a perfect wave, but the moment their feet touch the sand, the troubles start in the form of some pretty heavy handed localism. Bluntly told “Don’t live here, don’t surf here.” by locals, the Surfer and his kid is successfully bullied away from the heavenly looking surf by the followers of toxic bro guru, Scally, but after taking his son home, the Surfer returns in order to continue obsessively ringing his broker to ensure that the deal on the house goes through.
However, it’s here where The Surfer’s already strained psyche starts to take a beating and while he slowly bakes in the searing Australian sun, the continuing hate campaign from Scally’s men to deter him from the beach gradually ramps up to the point where it almost seems like a conspiracy. Soon the Surfer is experiencing anti-social behavior from everyone from a woman walking her dog to the local police. Refusing to leave the car park no matter how badly his mental and physical health deteriorates, the Surfer spirals into a personal hell as Scally’s underlings continue to tighten his grip.
To start things off, I feel like I need to offer a slight word of warning; even though the trailer for The Surfer indicates that the movie is a sun baked revenge flick as Cage’s tormented businessman is pushed beyond breaking point by Julian McMahon’s drawling alpha male. However, even though I myself name-dropped the vengeance-fuelled Mandy just a minute ago, Lorcan Finnegan’s deranged psychological thriller is more of a trashy examination of a mental breakdown brought on by frantic obsession and past trauma. The result is a maniacal ode to the exploitation movies that emerged from the land down under since the early 70s that also takes the form of an intense chamber piece that sees its hapless main character imprisoned in the car park overlooking the very beach the Surfer is convinced will salvage his entire existence.
While some will undoubtedly be confounded of 100 minutes of a man slowly roasting alive as his brain cooks in his skull after a liberal seasoning of paranoid and existential dread, for those ready to hop on board the crazy train are gifted with a truly gonzo experience that rewards just as much as it disorientates. Finnegan goes above and beyond to create a visual language that strives to make you experience the Surfer’s collapsing mental state on a first hand basis. As such, The Surfer may be the first movie in history to actually give me sunstroke as the director pulls out the visual stops, pushing the colours as vibrant as they can go and smearing an oppressive heat shimmer over every single scene. Conversely, the sea that motivates our glitching main character is filmed in such an unbelievablely enticing way that to enter it would surely be as life-affirming as moonwalking into Valhalla for an all expenses paid trip and the extreme close ups of nature and the various weirdos also add to the intense nature. Also making sure that those all-important, Ozploitation vibes are present and correct, Finnegan ensures that that rough, 70s style are in full effect and the director assaults us with throwback zooms and ramming the camera well into each character’s personal space and you can tell the filmmaker is working legitimately hard to replicate those anything goes nature of a cult genre.
However, no one on this production works harder than Nicolas Cage, who turns in one of the great, ego-free performances in recent years and while some weaning on the actor’s more explosive, on-screen rants may be disappointed that the man plays a more passive role as his life vaporises over the space of five days. While all the scummy things the Surfer is reduced to is great in causing the audience to recoil as his sanity stripping purgatory continues (drinking a puddle of beer off a ground littered with cigarette butts; chowing down on a rat he recently beat to death), but it’s also a riveting portrayal of a man losing his sanity in the quickest period of time possible that doesn’t actually feel like a cheat. His posture, voice and appearance all gradually change as the film goes on as a smartly dressed man with a Lexus suddenly becomes a grubby, sunburnt, lunatic that rants through chapped lips and swipes wildly at people with a severed telephone receiver. In fact, there are moments where you’re not entirely sure if reality has collapsed in on itself as the Surfer’s decaying essence soon starts to mirror the Bum, a wild-eyed vagrant who also has a long running beef with Scally and at times it genuinely has you guessing. While he does have the occasional volcanic moment (the “EAT THE RAT!” moment is one for the ages), it’s fascinating to watch a performance that both so controlled and yet utterly unhinged and it’s yet another example of Cage’s later career resurgence delivering some of the most interesting stuff he’s ever done.
While Julian McMahon’s villain is robust and suitably slimy, there is also a sense that after such an extended period where Cage tumbles into the rabbit hole of madness, the pay off is a little too easy. The climax feels a little like it’s come off of another movie and feels way too neat considering how aggressively scrappy the movie has been up until that point; but for a movie that holds up a massively exaggerated magnifying glass to the notion of what makes a real man and what happens when all that is taken away, both Cage and Finnegan work overtime to invoke a gonzo, crazed, bygone era of film that was every bit as crazed as the former is at his most batshit.
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