Review: 'The Surfer' is a psychedelic psychological drama, and a showcase for Nicolas Cage's brand of weird

There are a lot of questions posed in director Lorcan Finnegan’s sun-baked psychological thriller “The Surfer” asks — about pride and family and toxic masculinity — but even more questions that are answered simply by saying, “It’s a Nicolas Cage movie.”

Cage plays the nameless protagonist, a businessman who aims to show his teen son (Finn Little) the Australian surfing bay where he first learned to ride a board. When they get to the beach, though, they’re harassed by a trio of snotty teens, and then threatened by some muscular locals, whose menacing mantra is “Don’t live here, don’t surf here.” The leader of this group, an alpha male guru named Scally (played by Julian McMahon, formerly of “Nip/Tuck”), delivers a calmly emasculating warning that Cage and son should bugger off.

Cage, though, doesn’t want to back down, and Finnegan and screenwriter Thomas Martin (on his first feature) gradually show us why. Cage is desperate to buy a house overlooking this bay, the house he grew up in before his father’s death. He’s leveraged his fortune, and jeopardized his job to close the sale. He’s also alienated his wife, now ex-wife, and his son in the process.

His character’s desperation and the merciless December sun (it’s near Christmas in the southern hemisphere) lead our protagonist to do some stupid things — like letting the battery on his Lexus die, or losing custody of his surfboard, phone and shoes. Everyone, from the carpark barista (Adam Sollis) to the local cop (Justin Rosniak), seems to be in on the conspiracy to send Cage’s character packing. And the longer he stays, the more he starts to resemble the poor homeless man (Nic Cassim) who blames Scally for his son’s disappearance.

Finnegan turns the plight of Cage’s character into a psychedelic journey through hell, often filmed with shimmering camera effects to approximate a bad acid trip. Of course, this is a perfect setting for Cage, an actor who delights in such an emotional wasteland and turns it into his sandbox. “The Surfer” is a showcase for the glories and excesses of Cage’s brand of acting.

——

‘The Surfer’

★★★

Opens Friday, May 2, in theaters. Rated R for language, suicide, some violence, drug content and sexual material. Running time: 100 minutes.