Wake In Fright | Bouquets & Brickbats

18/05/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

The Surfer, written by Thomas Martin and directed by Lorcan Finnegan, is an Irish-Australian collaboration, filmed on location in beautiful Yallingup. Cinematographer Radek Ladczuk perfectly captures the town’s glorious coastline, all bright blue waves and golden sands shimmering in a sultry heat. However, despite initial appearances, this isn’t a story destined to gladden the hearts of the tourist board Down Under. Instead, it falls firmly into that sub-genre of ‘Unsettling Aussie Small Town’ films – helmed by Wake in Fright and encompassing everything from Picnic at Hanging Rock to The Royal Hotel – and acts as a warning to stay away.

Indeed, the warning here is explicit. As The Surfer (Nicolas Cage) strides confidently towards the water with his son (Finn Little), keen to share his childhood experiences of this particular beach, he is told in no uncertain terms that they’re not welcome: “Don’t live here, don’t surf here.” The Surfer’s protestations that he grew up in the town are met with indifference. “Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” the hostile gang of men repeat. And, in case he’s not quite got the message, “Fuck off.”

But The Surfer has no intention of fucking off. He might have messed up his marriage, his relationship with his son might be rocky, but he’s been successful in his career and he’s here to buy back his grandfather’s old house and start to put things right. The problem is, the locals are a close-knit, powerful bunch, and they’re determined to make him leave…

If this all sounds pretty straightforward, don’t be fooled. The Surfer is a head-scramble of a film: as twisty and impenetrable as an overgrown maze; a hallucinatory experience where nothing is as it seems. Is The Bum (Nicholas Cassim) real? Is he The Surfer? Is he both – a literal and metaphorical double, like Bertha Rochester or Frankenstein’s monster? There are also some gruesome, gnarly moments, and viewers with an aversion to rats should be prepared to look away.

As The Surfer becomes increasingly untethered, spiralling into an chimerical world of sleep deprivation, dehydration and sun exposure, his point of view becomes ever less reliable, and we’re as lost as he is, unsure what’s true and what is not. But in amongst the madness, he clings to one thing: securing the deal on the house. If he can just get through to his broker, everything will be okay…

Under Finnegan’s direction, The Surfer is a taut, disturbing psychological horror, the tension never letting up. Scally(Julian McMahon) makes a compelling villain, his Andrew-Tate-ish brand of toxic masculinity both revolting and convincingly irresistible, and I’m on the edge of my seat throughout, hoping for his comeuppance. But this is Cage’s film and he really owns it, dragging us with him into The Surfer’s personal hell.

In short, The Surfer is an excellent film. Just not a great advert for Oz.

4.1 stars

Susan Singfield

15/1/15

This neglected morality piece by Director Ted Kotcheff, originally released in 1971, gets a timely rerelease on DVD and shows us parts of Australia that the guide books would doubtless prefer to skip. Young teacher John Grant (Gary Bond, looking uncannily like a young Peter O Toole) sets off from a remote town in the outback with the intention of spending his summer vacation with his lady love in Sydney. Driven to boresom by his current job, from which there seems no escape unless he can buy himself out of his contract, he is relishing six weeks of freedom. But the trip incurs a one night stopover in Bundanyabba, a bustling little township where drinking and gambling seem to be the residents’ full-time occupation.

John bumps into local copper Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty) who shows him ‘the sights,’ most of which seem to involve the imbibing of copious amounts of alcohol and he also encounters Doc (Donald Pleasance) a former man of medicine, now a full time drunk. Before very long, John finds himself drawn into a local gambling craze, where people bet large amounts of money on the toss of two coins. At first, he wins and starts to see a possibility of a way out of his financial problems… but almost before he knows it, his luck changes and he finds himself drunk, broke and reduced to begging off the locals for his board and lodging…

Wake In Fright barely got noticed on first release and it’s easy to see why. Its unsympathetic illustration of the outback aussies as a race of drunken halfwits wasn’t going to make any friends in Australia, (particularly when helmed by a Canadian director) and his unflinching depiction of the ‘sport’ of kangaroo hunting, utilising genuinely harrowing footage, must have had the animal rights lobby all stirred up too. Throw in an ending that’s about as bleak as a wet weekend in Morecambe and it’s little wonder that this didn’t put bums on seats in ’71. But with the gift of hindsight there’s much here to admire, not least the performances of Gary bond and the late, lamented Donald Pleasance, who offers yet another in his gallery of grotesques. As a salutary warning to avoid the excesses of alcohol, it’s powerful stuff that was probably years ahead of its time.

Give it another shot. But be warned. If you were planning to go Walkabout in the outback thss year, you might find yourself rethinking the whole thing.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

15/1/15