Perfectly cast King of Weird Nicolas Cage loses the plot in Aussie thriller The Surfer

With an unhinged Nicolas Cage doing what he does best, Aussie thriller The Surfer will get in your head and stay there, writes Leigh Paatsch.

With a crazy homegrown surfing thriller, a quality biopic and a fun but forgettable fright-fest, there’s something for everyone on the big screen this week.

THE SURFER (MA15+)

Nicolas Cage and Alex Bertrand square up in The Surfer. Picture: David Dare Parker

Director: Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium)

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little

★★★

Cage becomes a wave-ing lunatic

Take the 1970s Australian classic Wake in Fright and, while you’re at it, grab the equally excellent 2017 adaptation of the Tim Winton novel Breath.

Now upload the two of them to the AI platform of your choice, and instruct the program to generate a third movie from the pair.

The end result should be something just like The Surfer: a disturbing psychodrama about a stranger in a strange land, in which the stranger is played by Nicolas Cage, and the strange land just happens to be the sunburnt country in which we all live.

The casting of cinema’s reigning King of Weird makes perfect sense in the particular case of The Surfer. It is difficult to think of anyone else but Cage coping with (and then fully meeting) the peculiar demands asked of him here.

The movie opens on a single stretch of West Australian coastline that becomes a complete and combustively dangerous obsession for Cage’s unnamed protagonist.

All this bloke wants to do is take his teenage son (Finn Little) out into the water to ride some of the beautiful waves rolling into shore.

However, the local surfers who spend every waking minute watching or wading into this spectacular swell do not take kindly to the presence of outsiders.

In fact, the moment any foreign foot lands on their patch of sand, this unruly mob (on the instruction of a cult-leader-ish dude played by Julian McMahon) assume an attack formation that banishes any would-be rider straight back to the car park.

Nicolas Cage is a man on the edge in The Surfer.

Quite rightly and quite worryingly, Cage’s character isn’t having any of this. Despite copping a severe beating and the subsequent theft of his prize board, our hard-pressed hero refuses to let the matter rest.

He sets up home in the aforementioned car park and devotes all of his attention to somehow catching that one wave he originally had in mind.

Needless to say, as this is a Nicolas Cage movie, there’s a high chance this fellow will lose his mind by the end.

If all of this makes The Surfer sound like an acquired taste, be assured your reading of the situation is bang on the money.

However, Cage’s appropriately addled performance and some unconventional flourishes from Irish director Lorcan Finnegan guarantee The Surfer will get inside your head and stay there.

The Surfer screens in special previews from this weekend (check local listings) and opens in full release next week.

MONSIEUR AZNAVOUR (M)

Tahar Rahim as French singer Charles Aznavour in the classy biopic Monsieur Aznavour.

★★★½

Selected cinemas

Just as Frank Sinatra’s unique combination of voice and attitude proved irresistible to the English-speaking world for several decades, those of a French persuasion never once fell out of love with Charles Aznavour. This classy biopic of the French crooning legend takes a safe, yet always interesting route through a long and winding career that eventually saw Aznavour sell over 200 million albums around the world.

Of course, there are some sizeable hurdles that had to be cleared by Aznavour (played with great conviction by Tahar Rahim) before he made it to the big time, and the movie is at its strongest while its subject is still getting a foothold on the ladder to success. After countless rejections in his early days (many a theatrical agent thought his looks were too ethnic and his vocals sounded too nasal), a chance meeting with the legendary chanson singer Edith Piaf provided the break Aznavour had impatiently waited for.

Once ol’ Charlie gets to the top, we encounter a familiar formula we’ve seen countless times before, particularly in those biopics centring on single-minded artists who do anything to establish, exploit and extend their time in the spotlight. However, the music sequences (sung live by Rahim) pay their way handsomely throughout, to the extent you’ll probably stream yourself a repeat listen afterwards.

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (MA15+)

Clown in a Cornfield delivers exactly what it promises.

★★★

General release

This ultra-disposable horror-comedy hybrid has one thing going for it: energy. This ain’t the kind of horror movie to sit on its hands for minutes at a time while we wait for another wave of dread to build, crash and then subside. No, once Clown in a Cornfield gets on its ridiculous roll, there’s just no stopping the thing. While it falls short of the high ha-ha levels set by that recent cheeky chiller The Monkey, there’s still enough well-crafted laughs and genuinely grotesque shocks to the senses to justify attendance for those so inclined.

The villain to be loathed, feared and secretly cheered here is Frendo the Clown, the former mascot for a corn syrup factory that had to be shut down in controversial circumstances. The teen buddies who have Frendo reaching for the nearest crossbow, pitchfork or chainsaw are partially responsible for the closure, which has not made them very popular in their small Missouri hometown. However, once their numbers start diminishing in kinetically gruesome ways, the threat posed by the icky sicko that is Frendo rises exponentially to all in this rural hamlet. Fun while it lasts, though forgettable once you’re home.

Originally published as Perfectly cast King of Weird Nicolas Cage loses the plot in Aussie thriller The Surfer