After one of the most successful films of his career with last year’s Longlegs, Nicolas Cage returns this year with The Surfer, a beach-set psychological thriller directed by Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium, Nocebo). Following its premiere at Cannes Film Festival last year, Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions picked up the film and have now debuted the new trailer ahead of a May 2 release.
Here’s the synopsis: “In the psychological thriller directed by Lorcan Finnegan, a man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. But his desire to hit the waves is thwarted by a group of locals whose mantra is “don’t live here, don’t surf here.” Humiliated and angry, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising in concert with the punishing heat of the summer and pushes him to his breaking point.”
Rory O’Connor said in his review, “In The Surfer, an exploitation film set to pressure-cook, a mild-mannered man is pitted against a group who even Andrew Tate might find a touch extreme. It’s set in South Australia on fictional Luna Bay, the kind of place where if the heat doesn’t get you, something else probably will. The water shines turquoise-blue but the beaches look like scorched earth. Into this furnace arrives an unnamed man (Nicolas Cage) hoping for nothing more than to view a cliffside property and catch a wave, but the locals have other ideas: “Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” one says, offering about as much hospitality as a switchblade.”
See the trailer and poster below.
