The Surfer (2025) Review

A psychological thriller that follows a father who is forbidden from taking his son surfing by locals and begins to lose his grip on reality as he is relentlessly taunted and tormented while he desperately tries to buy his childhood house.

"Eat the rat!"

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Nicolas Cage is known for playing some strange roles, and it seems like he won’t be stopping anytime soon. The Surfer is the perfect level of insane, wacky, and scary (something that can be used to describe nearly all of Cage’s roles) and keeps you on your toes the whole way through.

Lorcan Finnegan creates his films in a way that forces you to feel as lost as the protagonist, something that can also be seen in his film Vivarium (2019), and The Surfer is no exception. As Cage slowly loses his sense of reality, and even the sense of who he is, it is easy to find yourself questioning his reality too – did he really own a car, or were we made to feel that way? Does he actually have a family and why aren’t they here for him? Questions that he is seen to consider throughout the film, we begin to consider too. And to be able to lead the viewers into this false reality takes an exceptional level of skill – one which Finnegan displays consistently throughout the film.

Not only do you start to feel as lost as the Surfer (whose name we are never actually given), but you begin to experience his suffering during the film as he becomes more and more dehydrated. Each scene was edited perfectly and specifically to make it feel like you were living in that car park with Cage, as with every distortion, fish-eye effect, and flashback (or flash-forward) his grip on reality loosens – and so does ours.

The film focuses on capitalism, and how desperate people are for materialistic things that they begin to lose their sense of self, but it also focuses on the idea of fragile masculinity through Julian McMahon’s character Scally: the ‘head surfer’. He shows off his ideology of how men must suffer in order to be content with their lives, and even small comments from the locals suggest that the surfers let out these violent acts against tourists in order to prevent themselves from hurting their family. It’s a psychological thriller, yes, but it’s also a social commentary on masculinity, and how the phrase “boys will be boys” is a way to dismiss violent behaviour, rather than any attempt to prevent this behaviour from going further. And it shows how easy it is for these people to become a community, reinforcing their behaviour more and more. Despite its cult-like vibes, the film is more real than it appears at first glance.

The Surfer is terrifying, and yet it still remains emotional and captivating. Finnegan clearly knows how to explore the human psyche, and it’s exciting to see what he might come up with next.