When The Surfer does break out of the sun-addled fugue state that marks its midsection, it delivers a gonzo finale that lets Nicolas Cage rev himself up into his most manic, meme-able self.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 2, 2025

Funny, disturbing and disarming, The Surfer is the best thing Cage has done in years.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 28, 2024

Nods to the genre standard, Wake in Fright, but the misleading azure skies add to the bad trip. “Before you can surf you must suffer,” says menacing surfing guru, Scally (Julian McMahon). Cage obliges throughout this entertaining B-picture.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 23, 2024

Cage commits, again, to his latest malcontent on the verge, without troubling himself with an Aussie accent in any way, which is classic Cage.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 21, 2024

It’s good fun, mostly, although the director Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium) eventually boxes the movie into a muddled dead end.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2024

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...

| May 20, 2024

It’s a film that really wants to be about hot-button issues, like toxic masculinity and gentrification, but doesn’t have anything interesting to say about them.

| May 20, 2024

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

| Original Score: B- | May 19, 2024

It really is a midnight movie -- the kind of trippy slapdash comic nightmare where the only way to watch it is to sit back and “go with it.” Cage makes that easy to do.

| May 19, 2024

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.

| May 19, 2024