An old woman finds a missing sock, loses a husband, and uses way too much bleach. With voiceover work by Kate Micucci, Ben Sinclair, and a singing Sky Elobar.
All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE SURFER (2024)
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The Surfer is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.
DIRECTED BY: Lorcan Finnegan
FEATURING: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim
PLOT: A divorced father (Nicolas Cage) plans to buy the Australian beachside house he grew up in and teach his son to surf the waves like he did as a boy, but local “surf gangsters” torment him, insisting the beach is for “locals only.”
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The metaphor is obvious, but apt: this is a movie where you just catch Cage’s wave and ride it where it takes you, relishing the lack of control.
COMMENTS: As we open, Nicolas Cage (whose character is never named, merely credited as “The Surfer”) merely wants to take his kid (credited as “The Kid”) surfing on the beach where he grew up. He promises, in a bit of ironic foreshadowing, that catching a particularly gnarly wave is nothing short of a “short sharp shock of violence on the shore.” His dreams are dashed when a self-appointed surf cop in a Santa hat informs him that this public beach is for “locals only.” Outnumbered by the surf-gangsters (“Bay Boys”), Cage retreats to the overlook-cum-rest stop where he will spend most of the rest of the movie, anxiously attempting to contact his associate Mike to raise the additional $100,000 he needs posthaste to purchase his father’s old homestead on a cliff overlooking the beach. The Bay Boys’ bullying continues, however. First, Cage loses his surfboard; then, after his car battery and cell battery die, he finds himself stranded and subjected to increasing harassment. All the while, more details emerge suggesting that he may not be the completely together businessman he presents himself as, while golden-hued flashbacks suggest a youth that might not have been as carefree as he remembers.
What follows for Cage is a complete breakdown, as the script strips the bourgeoisie accoutrements of civilization away from him one by one, leaving him—at least temporarily—destitute. Accumulating a series of small wounds and suffering from short-term malnutrition and dehydration as he bakes in the Christmas sun, Cage drifts into a second-act fever dream where his very identity comes into question. About the only local who isn’t outright hostile to him is a scraggly beach bum (credited only as “The Bum”) who bunks in a discarded car in the same parking lot, and who has been bullied by the Bay Boys for decades now. Cage seems doomed to follow in his footsteps.
Theater patrons are advised to wear sunscreen, as the bright cinematography might give you sunburn, and when the screen starts wavering like high tide has briefly crested over the film, you might wonder if you’re experiencing heat stroke yourself. Francois Tetaz’s ultracool score, full of harp arpeggios and wordless vocals, takes its nostalgic period cues more from exotica than surf music, giving it a grandiose moodiness that constantly threatens to teeter into psychedelia. Finnegan’s visuals cross that line in the third act.
Cage himself is relatively restrained, more in Pig than Mandy mode; but of course, restrained for Cage can involve him force feeding a dead rat to a battered enemy. The fact that we expect, and accept, craziness from Cage makes him the perfect actor for this exercise in masculine delusionalism. Research confirmed my suspicions that this script about an upper middle-class man undergoing a midlife crisis explored via a water sport was explicitly inspired by another famous The S____er (among other sources). The Surfer, naturally, doesn’t quite reach its predecessor’s heights; it’s far more scattered, lacking its forebear’s intense focus on a single character, bringing a manospherish cult and hallucinatory red herrings into the equation. But The Surfer (suggested alternate title: The Sufferer) has a similar empathetic effect that hits home for men of a certain age and marital status.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: HEROIC DOSE (2025)
Relax, it’s just a little cosmic joke.
CONTENT WARNING: Psychedelics use, bathroom humor.
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE SHROUDS (2024)
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DIRECTED BY: David Cronenberg
FEATURING: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce
PLOT: An entrepreneur who’s obsessed with his dead wife invents a graveyard which allows the bereaved to watch their deceased love ones’ bodies decompose in real time; when some of the graves are vandalized, he’s led to investigate a mysterious conspiracy.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Starting from a typically Cronenbergian premise–straddling the line that separates the just barely plausible from the utterly implausible, but presented as if it were perfectly natural—the august director takes a deep dive into human depravity and loss, accompanied by plentiful hallucinations. (Walkout report: there was one other person in the theater with me when the film started; I was alone when the end credits rolled, although I didn’t notice when the other guy left.)
COMMENTS: “How dark are you willing to go?,” asks the improbably named Karsh of a first date, before taking the at-first-game lady on a walk to see a live feed of his wife’s decomposing corpse. Needless to say, he doesn’t get a second date.
When vandals attack Karsh’s hi-tech necrovoyeur cemetery, his business model is jeopardized. He seeks out the culprits with the help of his nerdy ex-brother-in-law and an A.I. assistant who looks suspiciously like his deceased wife, with paranoid suggestions offered by a sister-in-law who also looks suspiciously like his late wife. His investigations suggest abnormal growths on dead tissue, and the possibility that a cabal of international hackers are behind the whole thing. Meanwhile, Karsh has disturbing erotic dreams—all the more disturbing because he finds them comforting—about his deceased love. While probing into the mystery, Karsh also revives his sex life, after years of post-marital celibacy. More impossible, or nearly impossible, events follow, the plot becomes muddled, and The Shrouds wraps on a hallucinatory note.
Now an octogenarian, Cronenberg, who lost his own wife eight years ago, is still able to invent delicious perversities—Karsh’s sexy amputation nightmares, conspiracy theories as aphrodisiacs—even as he seems less and less interested in conclusive narratives. The conspiracies of The Brood (1979) or Videodrome (1983), as bizarrely unlikely as they may be, at least gave you a sense of who the enemy is and their motivation. In Shrouds and Crimes of the Future (2022), the menace is inconclusive, leading to a situation where the audience gets involved in the mystery only to be left hanging at the end. It is clear enough that the thematic enemy here is grief, jealousy, and death itself; but on the narrative side, the antagonist remains murky to the end.
Cronenberg leaves us with plenty to think about, however, including the question of why all of Karsh’s precious memories of his wife revolve exclusively around her body. Is this a personal flaw of Karsh’s, or an honest philosophical recognition that the ultimate reality is the material? Like the motives and identity of The Shrouds’ antagonists, it’s left to you to decide.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: THE CACTUS (2023)
A man finds himself lying alone and paralyzed in the desert after being thrown from his horse.
CONTENT WARNING: Gruesome imagery.