Psychological horror/thrillers like “The Surfer” (Vertigo Films), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, have spent the last few years being fruitful and multiplying on Netflix. The big question for any of them that are first released onto the big-screen is whether they are worth it.
“The Surfer” shares much common ground with the short, tightly-edited thriller, “Breakdown” (1997), in which events that the audience have witnessed as facts are subsequently denied by the police, locals, or other reliable narrators for reasons which become obvious later on. The frustration of the actor involved is the key pivot on which the film turns. We nearly scream at the screen, “Why are you denying that there was a woman here an hour ago?” In “The Surfer,” two other major ingredients are added: pathological obsession, and toxic masculinity just as unpleasant as that depicted in “Marching Powder,” also from 2025.
The surfer, played by Nicholas Cage, is obsessed about a real-estate deal. He thinks the bank have approved a mortgage to enable him to buy a $1.6-million house on Clifftop Drive, overlooking one Lunan Bay (the one here in Angus is much more inviting than the one in Australia appears to be…). He lived in this same house when he was a child, remembers the incredible views overlooking the bay below, and now arrives with his own teenager son for a viewing. One of the obsessions, then, is about the house, “I have been working my whole life to get back here.” But, as we figure out why Dad is trying far too hard to be liked by his son, the second obsession is revealed: he resents his wife for splitting up with him, and is using the child to try to get her back.
The toxic men are also introduced very early on. The surfer’s path onto the beach is blocked by groups of young thugs who insist that access is just for locals. As he repeatedly tries to get past them, he is told “you’ve got to know when to back down,” and we sense that this is the truism at the crux of the whole film. If he backed down, forgot the house, surfed at a different beach, found a different girlfriend, and got some psychiatric help, then things would likely turn out ok. But, of course, none of that happens, and what emerges is a reality that shatters like his mind, truth that can’t be distinguished from obsession, and a sense of being sucked with him into the heart of darkness on the beach below.
It turns out that the group on the beach are a quasi-religious cult, led by charismatic guru Scally, played by Julian McMahon. As the mission of the cult is gradually revealed, familiar tropes erupt—“taking responsibility for his values as a father and a man is too damned hard” is one of the least objectionable sayings. There is a sickening exchange during which the surfer challenges a women collecting one of the men from a meeting of the cult; she says, paraphrasing, “if the men don’t come and let it all out here, they’ll just come home and beat up their wives.” The cult seems to combine religion (communion, baptism, and a hint of “I will make all of this yours if you bow down and worship me”), with skin-branding, hard-drug use, dancing, and several Masonic-initiation-like tests to prove that secrets can be kept, that the initiated will die before revealing them. All the beach scenes involving the cult are excellent: the believers’ crazed looks, the beatific smile of the guru, the dangers of rugged, white, male, individualistic values. What is missing is the “why?” of all this. Neither the backstories of the members nor the reasons for the cult being formed are explored.
A mysterious photographer, played by Miranda Tapsell, seems to provide the evidence that the surfer can be believed, at least in part. Perhaps his confusion is because he has been sleeping in a car, has not washed for days, and has become clinically dehydrated after repeatedly drinking filthy water? A vagabond, played by Nicholas Cassim, who also lives in a car, and who bears a striking resemblance to the surfer as the latter becomes more and more dishevelled, adds even more layers of confusion (are the vagabond and the surfer the same person?).
The entire film takes place on the beach and on the elevated area above (at about the height of the dunes over Montrose Beach), and much of it is filmed during the half-light (daybreak, dawn, dusk, around a fire at night). The cinematography isn’t entirely successful: at times it is quite difficult to make out what is happening. [I did wonder if this is deliberate—after all, the film is supposed to be disorientating, unstable, only partially seen.] There are no scenes shot in the ocean, except very briefly at the end, nor is there much actual surfing in the film, for that matter. The surf is just part of the obsession, a stand in for the whale of Moby-Dick, perhaps.
The answer to the question about whether “The Surfer” is worth a big-screen release lies with Nicholas Cage. As he stares through his binoculars at the cult, his third obsession—with them—takes on a power multiple times the strength of the other two. Starting the film as a businessman with a mortgage broker and fancy car, he is sucked into a vortex, entangled by his obsessions, loses his mind to dehydration, and, two hours later, he has descended into a state of mind and body which is surely irreversible. But is this enough for the extra demands of the big-screen audience? At a cinema like the Playhouse, we expect more than from, say, Netflix, because we are giving more of our time and money, and excluding everything else for those two hours (even more so because this film, rightly, carries a 15-certificate, and we might need babysitters). There is no question that Nicholas Cage pulls off a remarkable performance. But surely one of the greatest strengths of the whole psychological-thriller genre (certainly of the ultra-familiar Netflix-style) is that they are more ensemble pieces, often featuring less well-known stars. A broader backstory for the cult members, making them less like cardboard-cutouts, filling out the intriguing roles of the vagabond and the photographer, and perhaps more screen time for the son as well as the guru would have produced a stronger and more complete release for the big-screen.
Adam Poole
10 May 2025
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