Two 'Experiences', Both Unalike in Dignity

Indie Meditations on Self-acceptance Arrive at Vastly Different Conclusions

Shallow Waters in 'The Surfer' (2025)

I missed out on seeing the Nicholas Cage film 'The Surfer' when it first premiered at Glasgow Film Festival. After all, even indie films with Cage featured often find themselves in cinemas eventually. Finally managing to catch it on general release a couple weeks back, I was perhaps expecting a gritty action thriller about a man and his son going to war over a patch of prime surfing territory with the local beach gang? Yeah, I feel the trailer maybe lied to me a little, as this was definitely not what I got.

Sure, 'The Surfer' is a tale of a man trying to re-purchase his Australian childhood house overlooking a glorious surfer's paradise, inhabited by a surf gang determined to keep the beach only for local residents. This man also happens to be going through some stuff - despite his wealth, his kid is distant, his wife is leaving him and he feels like his estate agent is messing him around on the house deal. At first I thought this might turn into a study on obsession: the idea of owning the house consumes him so he actively alienates his wife and son, keeps on transposing himself on the far-off house's balcony, and camps out in his car in the cliffside parking lot waiting on his deal going through. In his head he is established owner, anticipatory buyer and awestruck bystander all at once.

Obsession seems central to the plot as his and the audience's perceptions of reality start to change. He meets a destitute old man slighted by the beach gang; his car runs out of battery; quickly followed by his phone; in the heat of the day he loses his sunglasses and fancy suit, even his shoes; access to water is refused as the beach gang ceaselessly taunts him. The film turns into a relentless exercise in suffering yet the central character refuses to learn. He's given chance after chance to turn away from his obsession and he doesn't. The gang of surfers - led by an affluent, entitled nepo baby cult leader - are unrelentingly vicious to him and other non-locals in a way that borders on obscene. But after our protagonist essentially undergoes ego-death: finally lashing out caveman-style at one of his bullies, the gang welcome him in with open arms. Theirs is a cult of suffering, see? 🙄 Seems our protagonist just got sunstroke and everyone around him was cruelly playing into his delusions; yes, even his estate agent who was secretly a member of the gang (Listen, I'm a pro at suspending my disbelief, but this film broke it so many damn times). Oh, don't worry, the surf bros are still utter shit-stains on humanity: abusive, skeevy, perfectly capable of murder, statutory rape and pet slaughter! But the film leans HARD into the relief of community acceptance after the slog of personal suffering.

Ultimately Nicholas Cage's character accepts that he is now a "local", destroying the itinerant man's car as a part of his formal 'hazing' into the surfer's community. Furthermore, his kid sees him do it... somehow (oh, what a coincidence) and then starts to get dragged into the surf cult himself. A host of bad shit goes down in the last few scenes, flashing back on suicidal trauma, creating new gun violence trauma for everybody, psychologically scarring the kid and then LITERALLY just nonchalantly surfing away as conclusion.

It's honestly an incoherent mess. Sets up so many tantalising thematic threads only to refute, dead-end, or simply drop every single one of them. 'The Surfer' is a genuinely hard film to watch that tries to grapple with the process of trauma and self-forgiveness, but gets thoroughly lost along the way. Perhaps stop trying to make surfing a metaphor for life, dammit?! However, I did not scream at the film's incompetence nor did I fall asleep at its dullness; it's just an unequivocally bad movie. In the end I rated it 2/5 ⭐, because it managed to keep me trying to find that better movie within it - I felt like it tried to engage, even though it failed.

The Abstract Depths of 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' (2025)

'Hurry Up Tomorrow' from director Trey Edward Shults nearly went under my radar entirely; just showed up at our cinema one day with little fanfare. Not trailers, no hype, no mention from the festival circuit either. Was this gonna be a sleeper or a dud? All I knew going in was that it was something psychological starring Ortega, Keoghan and The Weeknd - enough to pique my curiosity. What I hadn't reckoned on was The Weeknd straight-up playing himself; full name, discography, stage persona, live concerts and everything. I do wonder if this was a pet project or extended music video that simply broke containment... but I think I'm happy it did?

First and foremost, let me just say this movie's cinematography is visceral and genuinely evocative. At times yes, it is flashy and overwhelming (to the extent it has an epilepsy warning), but does that convey the emotional hopelessness of flinging oneself through a club to reach a high that drops out the moment you hit the quiet debauchery of the afterparty? Damn right it does! Scenes are shot and edited with precision to make the viewer experience the world as the characters do. For me, it works perfectly, though I realise this won't be to everyone's tastes.

Story-wise, Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd) has just gone through a devastating break-up; the message left on his phone makes it very clear he is the sole reason for this. He has done or said something unforgivable to the woman he professed to love and honestly is framed here as a right dirtbag. He is in the midst of a tour, and also seems to be really going through some shit: his hurt is deep from the loss of his girlfriend; his manager Lee (Barry Keoghan) is overbearing and actively enabling his drug habit; his vocal chords are seizing from the stress; he's also an addict who's no longer fully in control of his own bad behaviour.

Interspersed with his first tense but successful gig night, we see a distraught unnamed girl (Jenny Ortega) douse a recently inhabited house in gasoline and proceed to burn it down; running to her car in tears. As Abel loses control of his own night, succumbing to Lee's rock 'n' roll lifestyle (despite warnings from the doctor not to push his tightening vocal chords), we see the girl make her way towards the big city. There is a feral nature to her as she watches the smoke of the burning homestead in her rear view mirror, steals more gas from under the nose of a cop and pushes her way to the front row at The Weeknd's next concert. Their two paths collide as Abel loses his voice mid-song, catches her eye and quite literally runs into her backstage.

I admit, I worried at this point that the movie would pull the typical romance trope and try to redeem the main character's nastiness through 'true' love. It could very easily have veered into implausible fanfic territory as the two find real connection over the course of the night, revelling in each other's company and proclaiming loyalty... only to doubly surprise me on a twist that had me fully invested! 💌 Abel wakes the next morning to promptly dismiss the girl as an on-tour fling, treats her like a throwaway and instinctively disengages from her emotional pleas to walk out of the hotel room. But damn, she refuses to be treated like shit and hits him hard over the back of the head with a vase! Things shift intriguingly from here, diving into an internal near-death experience in Abel's subconscious. Wherein he turns the blame upon himself through an allegorical encounter with female wrath and despair, and the trauma of his own childhood.

This dive into un-reality (which honestly continues until the film's end), is done with intense metaphorical purpose. Abel awakens to find himself trapped in his hotel bed Misery-style: being grilled for the truth by the girl in ways both fanatical and unmistakably sincere. She goes from manic goblin dancing, to intensely asking him to reflect, to tearfully and bloodily exorcising the demons of his toxic friendship, to stealing the air from his lungs in retribution for his hurled abuse. She embodies violence, devotion and self-acceptance all rolled into one being. On the verge of burning them both, she pauses as Abel finally sings his truth. With that, the girl frees him and vanishes, leaving him to walk phantom-like from the now burning hotel room into the backstage of his next show.

It is only in the credits that we read the girl's name is Anima, which in Latin is the word for life, breath and soul. Though abstract, at times even surreal in approach, the dream-like progress of this film is refreshingly thematically coherent! It portrays personal failing, turned via music & creative expression into radical self-acceptance and the will to change. The movie had some incredibly hard-to-watch moments of gendered violence, psychological manipulation and sudden gore that will deter some viewers. However, their inclusion felt both necessary to the plot and justified in their intensity. I'll happily give this a 4/5 ⭐as a genuinely enjoyable watch, especially if you are someone like me who enjoys the darkly psychological. Honestly a bit of a sleeper hit, which deserves a bit more attention!

So, Watch It or Skip?

It's pure chance that I ended up seeing both of these psychological thrillers back-to-back... but it was fortuitous. Getting to compare two extremes within the same genre doesn't usually happen this close together. Especially ones that try to deal with the same central theme - in this case reflection and self-acceptance when your actions have ultimately hurt those around you. Whilst one of these movies gets so swept up in assigning blame to circumstance that it practically disappears up its own arse - the other centres having to confront uncomfortable self-truths, recognising who to trust and what actions must be taken to improve yourself. In all honesty, I can't recommend 'The Surfer' to folks, and really struggle to think of an audience who'd enjoy watching its cynical cycle of suffering. On the other hand, I can heartily recommend folks check out 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' if they have a chance - at times it genuinely feels like catharsis on celluloid.