'The Surfer' (2025) Review: Nicolas Cage Suffers in a Miserable, Directionless Drama

The Surfer

Directed by: Lorcan Finnegan

Written by: Thomas Martin

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon

Release Date: May 2, 2025

Published: May 3, 2025

The Surfer is one of the most miserable movie experiences I’ve had the displeasure of sitting through. This grim 2025 drama stars Nicolas Cage and lingers on sun-roasted angst and psychological torment for a dreary, deathless 99-minute runtime. While the filmmaking technique is solid—especially the striking Australian beachside cinematography—it’s everything else about The Surfer that makes it almost unendurable.

In The Surfer, Nicolas Cage plays the titular role: a down-on-his-luck divorced dad clinging to a lost past. Cage’s character, unnamed and defined mostly by defeat, brings his reluctant son (played by Finn Little) to the beach to surf. The son clearly doesn’t want to be there—he even mentions he should be in school. But before they can hit the waves, a gang of aggressive teenage locals confronts them. Their message is simple: only locals are allowed to surf here.

What follows is a prolonged standoff. Cage’s character, unwilling to appear weak in front of his son, refuses to leave. After his son eventually walks away, Cage stays. He waits. And waits. And waits some more. Days pass. The teenagers never leave. Their leader, Scally (Julian McMahon), an older man with quiet menace, repeatedly tells Cage’s character to move on—but he won’t.

What The Surfer offers in abundance is suffering. Cage’s character is mocked, gaslit, robbed, starved, and dehydrated. He loses his phone. He loses his grip. He slowly descends into madness. At one point, he finds a gun in a public bathroom—hinting that maybe, just maybe, we’ll get a cathartic Nicolas Cage meltdown or violent revenge rampage. But no. The Surfer refuses even that flicker of entertainment. It’s a grim exercise in futility.

It’s like someone tried to blend Straw Dogs with Endless Summer and stripped out everything that made either film watchable. Scene after scene unfolds the same way: Cage gets insulted, degraded, or offered reasonable advice (just leave), and he ignores it. Over and over. There’s no character development, no emotional payoff, just relentless humiliation. What is The Surfer trying to say? What is the point? After watching the film, I genuinely have no idea.

Midway through, someone mutters something vaguely biblical—something about tribulation. Perhaps the idea is that if Cage’s character endures seven days of torment, he’ll be accepted by the locals. Maybe he’ll earn the right to surf. But the film itself seems to reject even that logic. Why would he want to be accepted by this band of criminal bullies? Why is that a goal?

The Surfer treads the same ground again and again—no progression, no catharsis. Cage’s character ends the movie essentially where he started, only now burdened with psychological trauma and having subjected his son to an avoidable ordeal. Every awful thing that happens could have been avoided if he’d simply walked a little farther down the beach and found a new spot to surf. It’s not about backing down from bullies—it’s about whether watching this man make the same mistake for 99 minutes is worth your time. Spoiler: it’s not.

Verdict: A grim, repetitive film that wastes Nicolas Cage and its promising premise in a joyless spiral of self-inflicted suffering.

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