The Surfer

You can always tell who the real Cage-a-holics are in a theater audience -- it's the ones who are laughing and reacting maybe a little too loudly with every facial expression or movement that Nic Cage makes, just waiting for that classic freak-out moment that will sustain them until the next Cage movie. I say this with adoration; I'm not immune to the charms of the singularly unique 61-year-old actor and the quirky roles he plays in the hundreds of movies he's appeared in since his first role in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" all the way back in 1982.

Cage has always had an eye for unique, off-kilter projects, and "The Surfer" is no exception. Directed by Lorcan Finnegan (creator of the equally strange "Vivarium" (2019) and "Nocebo" (2022)), the movie allows Cage to tackle a role that probably would not have worked with literally any other actor. The film starts with a well-dressed Cage checking out a private beach with his son in a small town on the Australian coastline, where he is just about to close on a deal to buy back his expensive family home. However, they are quickly prevented from stepping on the beach by the Bay Boys, a kind of punk surf gang led by local bigwig Scally (Julian McMahon), who violently enforce a “don’t live here, don’t surf here” policy. After being summarily humiliated by the gang, Cage's son takes off, but Cage refuses to leave the beach parking lot, setting up a series of surreal events over the course of a few days that start to blur the viewer's conception of reality.

Cage insists to anyone who will listen that he is from here and is buying a house, but no one particularly cares. A homeless man living in a wrecked car warns him to stay away from the gang. A police officer (who is clearly in the gang himself) offers no help and demands that Cage leaves. And then things start to get really weird. Cage's appearance slowly starts to deteriorate as the days go by under the hot sun. Cage's real estate agent shows up with another family who seem set to buy the house, even as the agent seems not to recognize Cage at all. He is slowly stripped of all of his money and possessions, and his phone and car run out of battery life. He is constantly tormented by the Bay Boys, and is reduced to scrounging for food out of trash cans and seeking shelter in the homeless man's abandonded car. You start to think Cage IS the homeless man, as no one seems to believe Cage is who is claims to be.

It's an interesting set-up that ultimately the movie fails to fully deliver on, leaving you with way more questions than answers. It's not even entirely clear what the movie is trying to tell you, as the screenplay's ambiguity is at times a feature and a bug. There is clearly commentary here about toxic masculinity and how young men can get attracted to a hyper-masculine, cult-like figure (kind of like a beach version of Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson). The Bay Boys are happy to follow their charismatic leader, who spouts vague philosophical nonsense and leads them through various frat-like rituals. It's often very funny to watch, even as it's equally alarming that most of us can recognize that same behavior in many young men in the real world.

Cage's journey is less clear. At one point, I thought it might be a story of someone (Cage) so desperate to join what is seen as an elite/wealthy class (the Bay Boys) that he is willing to debase and humiliate himself, slowly losing his identity until he is accepted by the group as a blank slate on which they can mold their ideology. That guess is probably as good as anything else. There is also the undercurrent of a past tragedy in Cage's character's life, whose father suffered some kind of similar humiliation on the same beach many years ago, painting some kind of parallel between the two that comes to a head a the film's head-scratching climax.

Cage mostly holds things together by really committing to the character's slow descent, getting more and more haggard looking, making less and less sense, eventually shuffling around with a limp like a sun-dried zombie, until he can't take any more and finally freaks out and confronts the Bay Boys. There are several memeable moments, as Cage eats a burrito filled with maggots, licks dirty water from the ground, and slurps up bird eggs from a nearby nest. It's exactly the kind of bizarro shenanigans we expect from a Nic Cage movie, and he truly delivers.

However, the movie's initial promise as a penetrating psychological/existential thriller slowly loses shape and fizzles out in the Australian sun, leaving us with a collection of puzzle pieces that the movie wants you to try and put together even as it seems apparent that they don't really fit.