Metacritic reviews

Crisply scripted by Thomas Martin and directed by Finnegan with a pleasing, no-frills intensity, The Surfer feels resolutely old-school. It’s a low-budget, hard-hitting comic bruiser of a picture: a midlife-crisis movie dressed up as a 1970s exploitation flick.

Cage commits, again, to his latest malcontent on the verge, without troubling himself with an Aussie accent in any way, which is classic Cage. It’s a performance that belongs quite high up in the canon.

The Nicolas Cage renaissance rages on and this unsettling Ozpoiltation thriller provides a perfect sandbox for “Nicolas Cage”, the actor who enjoys a good metatextual jape.

Lorcan Finnegan’s smart survival thriller The Surfer sets a brutal, sun-soaked stage for star Nicolas Cage to do what he does best: go completely nuts.

In the end, the film feels too rollicking and self-parodying to be taken seriously, but it strikes just the right tone to make it a fun Midnight movie.

There is still much to enjoy and admire here if you can stay on the film’s wavelength without getting frustrated.

This is a film that knows what it’s doing and does it very well

Finnegan continues to demonstrate a passion for upending the banality of the everyday, but The Surfer gets as lost as its protagonist, unable to ride the wave of its own mad design.

The film is trying for something, but it’s also sketchy in the extreme.

What ultimately weighs it down is the lack of a core narrative to ground the chaos and madness around it. Still, come for the views, the insanity, and Cage giving away a priceless watch for a flat white.