ComingSoon spoke to The Surfer director Lorcan Finnegan about his new psychological thriller movie starring Nicolas Cage. Finnegan discusses his love for Australian movies and his film’s mixture of natural beauty and psychological pain. The movie is now playing in theaters nationwide.
“In the psychological thriller directed by Lorcan Finnegan, a man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. But his desire to hit the waves is thwarted by a group of locals whose mantra is ‘don’t live here, don’t surf here.’ Humiliated and angry, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising in concert with the punishing heat of the summer and pushes him to his breaking point,” says the synopsis for The Surfer.
Tyler Treese: The Surfer is a trippy homage to the Ozploitation movies from the seventies. You’re clearly Irish, as is the writer. I was curious if you could speak to your history with the genre and what led you to want to put your own spin on it? Because it clearly comes from a place of reverence.
Lorcan Finnegan: Yeah, I mean both Tom and I are big fans of the New Wave Australian films, Ozploitation films. In Ireland, everybody watched these two shows on TV. One was Neighbours, the other was Home and Away, and they were both set in Australia.
We kind of grew up knowing people who moved to Australia ’cause it’s a big Irish diaspora there. And then these, watching these soaps, so like Australia was always sort of on our radar, you know, and then some of the films that were coming out in the seventies and even the eighties and sixties from Australia were just really interesting.
I think it was a time where all of the filmmaking techniques and everything, and the equipment were all sort of there. And then there was also this experimentation coming out of the sixties that led to some really exciting films. And then there’s this tradition of non-Australians making various Australian films, like Canadian Ted Kotcheff making Wake in Fright and Nicolas Roeg, who is British, making Walkabout.
So we thought, you know, there’s an interesting opportunity to be outsiders coming to Australia and Nic’s characters is an outsider coming back to this place. So yeah, I think it all makes for an interesting cocktail.
The beach where you filmed is gorgeous. I wanted to ask about the juxtaposition, because we see this natural beauty with the beach and animals, and then there’s just the utter desperation of Nicolas Cage’s character. How is it finding that balance visually? It was such an interesting film to watch from that viewpoint.
I mean the story called for that… the place has to be beautiful and beguiling and mesmeric, you know, this water is turquoise and makes you kind of feel nostalgic. And because I’m telling the film all through Nic Cage’s character’s point of view – his subjective experience of the whole weird few days he spends there – there kind of needed the place to play a big role in that and for you to understand that how this kind of a place almost has a supernatural hold on them.
So it has to be beautiful but also have a certain threatening element to it as well. And especially as the Australian summer increases in its temperature, he becomes dehydrated and delirious from the heat of the place. And then all the animals are almost like laughing at him.
I’m watching him in this space, and he’s almost turning into a wild animal at the same time. And you know, rummaging for birds, eggs, and looking through the bin for food and that kind of thing.
Thanks to Lorcan Finnegan for taking the time to talk about The Surfer, which is now in theaters.
