The Surfer
Low on gloom, high on doom, paradise is lost in this hauntingly bright Ozploitation psychological thriller starring Nicolas Cage
Sun kissed and cursed, Nicolas Cage’s reality is steadily rended in this Lynchian-cum-Baywatch chamber piece.
The ever-protean Cage is a dad playing hooky with his distant teenage son: catching a wave while trying to secure the purchase of a specific beachfront property – his old childhood home – in an effort to stitch his family back together (his wife, now remarrying and expecting, wants to finalise a divorce) and to supplant childhood trauma (his own father met his demise on this very celadon shore). But, accidentally stumbling into a territorial war (“Don’t live here? Don’t surf here!”) with a local frat-come-terrorist group, braying with MAGA-esque masculinity, Cage’s obstacles only distend in the taunting environs of Luna Bay (Julian McMahon is a scene-stealing addition, sonning intruders with just a steely gaze). Cage’s bad luck omnibus sees him bloody, mugged and extorted as The Surfer torques its torture from mild agita to agonising gaslighting.
Stylish with an undercurrent of malice, the film’s heightened B-movie flourishes (melodramatic closeups and campy musical cues) are wickedly disconcerting, washing over the audience a harmonious paranoia. Heat is a character in itself, but does its febrile grip warp and distort or simply illuminate as an impartial constant? Were the conditions of our hero’s perceived reality ever so certain to begin with as he dances in dislocation and peripheral grief?
The Surfer is a primal, elusive, maddening chase; a breakdown movie that plumbs selfhood, family, vagrancy and fate. In the punishing sun, a man comes undone.
Released 9 May by Vertigo; certificate 15