Nicolas Cage is headlining revenge thriller The Surfer, and the first trailer for the movie has arrived. Right here, in fact.
Whatever else happens in 2025, at least we have Nicolas Cage in The Surfer, and that offers no small degree of comfort.
First announced in the middle of 2023, the psychological thriller follow’s Cage’s ageing surfer as he returns to his beachside hometown in Australia, many years since building a life for himself in the US. However, any feelings of fuzzy nostalgia are quickly shattered when he is humiliated in front of his teenage son by a local gang of surfers who lay claim over the secluded surfer’s spot of his childhood. Humiliated, Cage decides to dispute the surfers’ claims, but as things escalate, the conflict spirals wildly out of control, pushing Cage’s surfer to the brink of madness.
So far, so Cage. We’ve seen the actor play such parts in similar stories before, bringing his unique performance style to bear on plenty of revenge thrillers, with Mandy and Pig probably being the pick of the bunch from the last few years. However, from the glimpse afforded to us from The Surfer's trailer, we might just have another memorable turn from Cage to look forward to when the film arrives in May.
While certainly whetting the appetite, the trailer doesn’t show too much and there are just a few snippets where the actor’s performance looks to be moving the needle somewhere towards the region of ‘Full Cage.’ We certainly got a few Mandy vibes from some of the scenes, maybe even a hint of The Wicker Man. It also looks like the film’s largely Australian cast have put in some great work too, with some offbeat line readings hinting that Cage will have plenty of colourful performances to bounce off.
One-time Doctor Doom Julian McMahon stars opposite Cage, while Nic Cassim, Miranda Tapsell, Alexander Bertrand and Justin Rosniak co-star. Vivarium filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan directs from a script by Thomas Martin. We don’t have a date yet for the film’s release here in the UK but we’re hoping to see it arrive at the same time as its early May US release.
