The Surfer - Nick Cage at His Strangest?

Nicolas Cage has featured in more than his fair share of strange movies - or just movies for that matter. From The Wicker Man to Willy's Wonderland, there is high contention for the title of 'Nick Cage's Strangest Movie' but does his newest entry, The Surfer, take the cake? Definitely not, but it is up there.

Simply put, The Surfer is primarily Nicholas Cage mixed with a bit of surfing and a few cultish themes. It's complete nonsense but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know that many of you reading this haven't actually watched the movie because it's not very big so I'll give you a little rundown to catch you up. This follows Nicholas Cage's character as he goes back to his hometown to buy his childhood home and surf on his old beach. This is slowly unraveled over the course of a hundred minutes as he is relentlessly terrorised by a surfer gang while he becomes more and more dehydrated.

Nick Cage, just like every one of his roles, puts his all into this which was definitely needed for this specific story. It may not seem like it, but I don't think there is a single other actor on earth who could play this role any better. That sounds extreme, I know, but if you've experienced this fever dream of a movie, you will completely understand.

This movie is like a sinkhole, both in its favour and to its demise. There's so much going on throughout and it never stops dragging you further into a hole of confusion, and I don't think it ever fully releases you by the end. In my opinion, this type of movie has two options, of which this took neither. They can either choose to fully release you by the end and answer every question you have, or the complete opposite, where they pull you in fully and without remorse, forcing you to have as many questions as possible - think Beau Is Afraid.

Strangely, because this movie tries to stay somewhere in between those two options, I felt like I wasn't left with enough questions - even though I did have a few. I think the core premise of that feeling is that every question I have is very base level, none of them inspire other questions.

The Bay Boys, the surfer gang turned cult in this movie, was very obviously a parody of Andrew Tate's 'War Room'. There are many themes of toxic masculinity and domestic abuse throughout the entire runtime, especially in the wording of 'blowing off steam' by committing violent crime. There's even one character who says she'd rather they do this than take their pent up aggression home, insinuating that there is a domestic abuse epidemic within this town. The abuse aspect of this movie was handled very delicately, often slightly too much. This is a very interesting avenue to explore and I just wish there was more aside from those few moments.

The twist of this movie was interesting and did make sense, however I think there was many more slightly more nonsensical twists that could've been done. One that I assumed was that Nicholas Cage and a homeless old man who'd been there the entire movie were the same person. This old man was portrayed as crazy for the entire movie and it seemed like he was a future Nicholas Cage or a hallucination.

A few big hints to this possibly being the case were that in our main character's big moments of insanity, the old man was nowhere to be seen. The biggest, though, was the police officer in the movie being adamant that the old man's car was Cage's. I also thought Nicholas Cage could've been the old man's son - due to their stories lining up almost perfectly - but this had much less footing.

The third act is where this really lost me completely. I was always trying to wade through the constant waves of insanity being thrown at the audience to try and find any meaning to it all, but when that final wave crashed into me I completely abandoned that thought because every theory was lost.

That final reveal of every event throughout this entire fever dream of a movie being part of some elaborate test of Nick Cage's strength and worthiness of surfing this beach did make some sense - but that doesn't mean it was good. I thought him being initiated into this cult somewhat took away from a lot of what he was doing throughout the entire film, trying all he can to make this beach accessible. It's definitely possible that there is a hidden meaning within all this that I'm not seeing so I'd love to be enlightened, however I think the writers just wanted an easy conclusion that didn't require pulling the audience further into this confusion hole.

After saying all this, though, I did like the final moments of this movie. It was abrupt and unexpected but really worked and had some amazing shock factor. As a whole, this is a passable movie that's fun to watch but doesn't go far enough into anything it tries, leaving you confused as to the point.