THE SURFER : Tuesday 27th May 2025

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'THE SURFER' at my local independent movie theatre this week, and this Australian and Irish Co-Produced psychological thriller film is Directed by Lorcan Finnegan who made his feature film making debut with 'Without Name' in 2016 and would follow this up with 'Vivarium' in 2019 and 'Nocebo' in 2022. The film premiered in the Midnight Screenings section at the Cannes Film Festival in mid-May last year, was released Stateside and here in Australia earlier this month and has garnered generally favourable reviews, and has so far grossed US$2M.

It is the week leading up to Christmas in the small Western Australian beachside town of Luna Bay, and the sun is beating down. We are introduced to the Surfer (Nicolas Cage) and his mid-teenage son (Finn Little) driving down to a car park in a Lexus, with the intention that the father and son go for a surf. The kid is not amused that his dad has taken him out of school for the day, but the dad persists and says that he a surprise in store for his son. They park up, put on their wet suits and grab their surf boards and take the short walk down to the ocean, where dad used to surf when he was much younger and before he relocated to California. The Surfer tells his son that he is intending to repurchase his childhood home for them overlooking that very beach, as it has recently come on the market, and he is in prime position to snap it up. 

However, when the Surfer and his son reach the sand, they are immediately set upon by surfing localists doing their utmost to defend their beach under the matra 'don't live here, don't surf here', and led by Scally (Julian McMahon), who is a self-styled guru determined to protect the beach from outsider non-residents. The Surfer and his son are turned away by Scally and his followers, which mortifies the Kid and makes him want to leave. The Surfer takes the Kid home and returns to the beach.

Desperate to close the deal on the house before the extended Christmas break, the Surfer makes numerous calls in order to secure the needed funds, although is met with resistance from his bank and mortgage lender. During the first day, the Surfer also meets the Bum (Nicholas Cassim), who is living in his broken-down Subaru station wagon parked in a corner of the beachside car park. As the Surfer and the Bum watch Scally and his gang through a pair of binoculars, the Bum tells the Surfer that Scally murdered his son and killed his dog.

Refusing to leave, that night, while the Surfer is in the public toilet block, the locals steal his surfboard and vandalise his car, which results in a physical confrontation. The next morning, the Police (Justin Rosniak) arrive but turn out to be part of Scally's gang and advise the Surfer to leave the beach, which the Surfer is unable to do as the battery in his Lexus is dead, because he spent all of the previous night sleeping in his car with the air conditioning turned on.

Later that day, a kindly photographer (Miranda Tapsell) helps him jump-start his car and takes a photo of him standing next to it. After the photographer leaves, the Surfer's phone battery dies, and because he does not have a charger, it becomes impossible for him to purchase a coffee and food from the nearby beach kiosk, as all of his credit cards were saved to his phone. In order to get a coffee and to charge his phone, so that he can continue securing an additional AU$100K funding for the home, he leaves his father's watch as collateral, and his phone to be charged, with the owner of the kiosk. 

Unable to eat and drink, as Scally's gang had smeared dog turd all over the water fountain, and chained his vicious dog up to the fountain to prevent the Surfer from accessing it. The taps in the public toilet run brown contaminated water, and still refusing to leave, the Surfer begins to lose his sanity. After a confrontation with his real estate agent, who claims not to know who he is, he finds that the kiosk has closed for the day, and he cannot get his phone or his watch back. Additionally, the Policeman who the day before had advised him to leave the beach returns and insists that he move his car, which he tells the Surfer is not in fact a Lexus, which has subsequently been stolen, but rather the broken-down Subaru the Bum had been living in. With nowhere else to go, he takes to living in the Bum's vehicle, taking a sharktooth necklace from the car the Bum had insisted his own son had won in a local surfing competition before he was killed by Scally and his gang.

The photographer returns and shows the Surfer, who by now is driven to the brink of insanity by heat exhaustion and dehydration, a picture of himself she had taken earlier, proving that he is in fact not the Bum and is actually who he originally thought that he was. She offers him a bottle of water which he gulps down needless to say. Enraged and desperate, he goes to the beach, fights and nearly drowns Pitbull (Alexander Bertrand). After struggling to get out of the water, Scally's crew lift the Surfer up onto their shoulders and carry him off, patching him up from the scrapes and bruises he has sustained these past few days, and he wakes in Scally's den to find his phone, his watch and his car keys arranged neatly by his bedside. Scally then reveals to him that the entire experience was a test to ensure that the Surfer was worthy of buying the beachside house he grew up in, and to further ensure that he can be trusted, and as a final test Scally forces the Surfer to torch the Bum's car, which he does. 

Finally able to actually go for a surf, the Surfer, the Kid, Scally, and his gang all return to the beach only to be halted in their tracks by the Bum, who has returned to the beach with a hand gun. The Bum allows most of the gang to leave but insists that Scally, the Surfer, and the Kid stay, because they have become the same locals who had terrorised him initially and had continued to do so. The Surfer, however, is able to convince the Bum to let him and the Kid surf by returning the Bum's sharktooth necklace. As the Surfer and the Kid finally paddle out into the ocean, the Bum executes Scally and then shoots himself in the head.

Whatever you want to say about 'The Surfer' you have to hand it Nicolas Cage for turning out another B-Movie that taps in to his gonzo, bananas and off-beat persona that somehow manages to carry this film along. I struggled with this offering with Director Lorcan Finnegan going intensely close-up on several characters eyes; his frequent darting to various animals as if to showcase the varied wildlife that Australia has to offer from Huntsman spiders, to cicada's, to echidna's, kangaroos, snakes and a wild dog - they're all on display here. And, rather than sweating it out in the heat of mid-Summer, why didn't the Surfer just go to his soon to be ex-wife's house which is clearly close enough as the son rides his bicycle down to the beach for his Dad's final confrontation with the Bum. Because of this the film is repetitive, and there are several plot holes you can drive a truck through, but at its heart it's a film about toxic tribal masculinity, exploitation and one man's decent into (near) lunacy in a beachside car park that so it seems there is no escape from.

'The Surfer' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD : Tuesday 18th May 2021.

'THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD' is an MA15+ Rated American survival action thriller film which I saw this week at my local multiplex. It is Directed and Co-Written for the screen by Taylor Sheridan and based on the 2014 book of the same name by Michael Koryta. Sheridan's previous two film making credits are 'Vile' in 2011 and 'Wind River' in 2017, although he has also written the Screenplays for various others including 'Sicario' in 2015 and its 2018 sequel 'Sicario : Day of the Soldado', 'Hell or High Water' and 'Wind River', plus numerous episodes of TV series 'Yellowstone'. The film was released in South Korea earlier this month, went on general release in Australia and the US from last week, has so far grossed US$7.5M and has generated mixed critical Reviews.

Here then, Hannah Faber (Angelina Jolie) is a smokejumper (a specially trained wildland firefighter who provides an initial attack response on remote wildland fires - they are inserted at the location of the fire by parachute) who is struggling to come to terms with the deaths of three young boys and another smokejumper last year during a forest fire which she was supposedly in charge of, and mis-read the direction the wind was blowing in, so engulfing the four fatalities in flame. She has subsequently been posted to a fire observation tower above the tree line in Park County, Montana. 

In the meantime Owen Casserly (Jake Weber) a widowed forensic accountant is preparing breakfast for his son Connor (Finn Little) when he learns over breaking early morning news that his boss and his family were blown sky high in an apparent gas explosion at their home. The reality is, that they were killed by father and son assassins Jack and Patrick Blackwell (Aiden Gillen and Nicholas Hoult respectively). Owen is of the belief that the assassins will target him next, as the evidence revealed during the course of his forensic accounting investigations tell a story of wide spread corruption through government departments, politicians and other influential parties. And so Owen makes a snap decision to go on the run with Connor, ultimately wanting to seek refuge with his brother-in-law Ethan Sawyer (Jon Bernthal) a Deputy Sheriff in Park County, and Hannah's former boyfriend. 

En-route to Park County, and after the Blackwell's have ransacked the Casserly home to find no one there and evidence that they left in a hurry, the Blackwell's ambush Owen and Connor forcing them off the road and down a steep ravine. As Owen sits in the drivers seat dying, he gives Connor hand written evidence implicating the Blackwell's employer, mob boss Arthur Phillip (Tyler Perry). He tells Connor to get out of the car and go hide under a fallen tree and to remain silent no matter what he witnesses. At that, from the road, the Blackwell's fire a barrage of bullets into the back of the car, shredding Owen who puts his foot on the accelerator sending the vehicle crashing down the ravine even further before coming to rest in a crumpled heap on its side at the bottom.    

Ethan comes across the car wreck on his way home later that afternoon, and meanwhile Hannah encounters Connor wandering through the forest while she is out on patrol. Connor is initially untrusting of Hannah and tries to evade her, but when confronted with a twelve mile hike to the nearest town relents and reluctantly agrees to accompany her back to the tower to contact the Police and the news media for help. Jack Blackwell receives a call from Arthur Phillip who wants to meet. Phillip instructs Blackwell to hunt down Connor and kill him.

And so in order to cause a distraction for a few hours while the Blackwell's go about their business, they start a forest fire using flares that quickly ignites the dry undergrowth and before you know it is a full blown forest fire raging out of control. They then drive to Ethan's house disguised as Police Officers believing that Connor would have made it there, to be greeted by Ethan's six months pregnant wife Allison (Medina Senghore). They force their way in and beat Allison into submission until she agrees to call Ethan and ask him the whereabouts of Connor. Ultimately, another scuffle breaks out in which Allison gains the upper hand with the use of a gas cylinder which she ignites and points it flamethrower like at Jack burning him badly to the side of his face, and fires off a few shotgun rounds at Patrick in the process catching them both off guard. Allison escapes the house.

That night an electrical storm strikes and a direct lightning bolt hits the tower frying the radio, the satellite phone and all the electrics in the place. Hannah then leads Connor into town on foot but are forced to retreat back to the tower when the fire blocks their safe passage through the woodland. Hannah is struck by lightning when crossing an open field, but survives badly shaken but not stirred save for a not insignificant burn to her shoulder. Ethan hurries home with the Sheriff having been previously alerted in the phone call from Allison that something was not quite right at home. The Blackwell's emerge and shoot the Sheriff dead and then force Ethan to guide them through the forest as their tracker to hunt down Connor. 

The Blackwell's and Ethan eventually come across the tower which appears empty, except from smoke rising out of a wood burning chimney. Ethan is forced to search it while the Blackwell's watch from a tree, saying that if Connor is in there to bring him down to them, and if not, to set the lookout alight. Having returned to the tower earlier, Hannah and Connor both hide while Ethan attempts to make it appear empty in the dark. Patrick notices Ethan talking and they start shooting into the tower, injuring Ethan. Hannah and Connor manage to escape. The Blackwells try to follow them but are stopped when Allison, having tracked down Ethan by way of a GPS, starts shooting at them. Patrick and Jack split up, with Patrick going after Hannah and Connor, and Jack staying to try and kill Allison; however, she shoots him twice disabling him and then plugs him with a third round at close range killing him.

Connor is told to run ahead by Hannah who has suffered a bullet wound to the leg, while she attempts to distract Patrick but he gains the upper hand over Hannah and is savagely landing punches to her face and head. Connor returns pleading for him to stop beating Hannah. Patrick rises to his feet, and approaches Connor telling him to turn around while he draws a knife in readiness to slit the young lads throat. Hannah meanwhile rises to her feet behind Patrick and lunges at him twice and a third time with a pick axe severely injuring him to the point where he asks her to finish him off. But she declines saying that he can suffer and then leaves him to burn to death in the approaching fire which quickly and very painfully engulfs him. 

Allison reunites with Ethan in the tower but they are trapped by the fire; they put on oxygen masks and hold each other as it surrounds them. Hannah and Connor jump into a stream and watch from under the water as the fire engulfs the forest all around and above them. The next morning as day breaks Hannah and Connor are sat by the waters edge of the stream which saved them both. They walk back to the tower, just as three men from Hannah's smoke-jumping team are parachuted in to save them, and Allison in the tower. Ethan died overnight from injuries sustained from his bullet wounds. Later that morning after medical assistance had been rendered, Connor prepares to give his father's evidence to the awaiting media channels and Hannah promises to help him navigate through his uncertain future. 

The production values in 'Those Who Wish Me Dead' are pretty good it must be said, particularly the staged forest fire sequences which look authentic enough and add to the realism of the film. There is also a fine cast of A-list movie talent here that is underpinned by two up and coming stars in young Aussie Finn Little and Medina Senghore that help elevate the film somewhat, and add a few moments of tension and emotion in an otherwise fairly predictable storyline that never rises above the sum of its parts. Had this film been released sometime during the late '80's or the '90's it probably would have been a smash hit and as it is this film is a formulaic throwback to those natural disaster flicks that filled the shelves in our local video and dvd rental stores during that bygone era. The Director and Writer Taylor Sheridan has proven his abilities with action spectacle and how to get the most out of his cast in an entertaining enough feature that is often overly violent, and will leave many questions unanswered by the time the end credits roll. At a brisk running time of one hundred minutes it is fast paced and will not leave you wanting, even though within 24 hours you will have forgotten about this movie and wondering what to see next. 

'Those Who Wish Me Dead' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-