The following contains spoilers for The Surfer, now playing in theatersThe Surfer is a wild and tense movie that raises a lot of questions about the perception of the main character and the world around him. The Surfer stars Nic Cage as the тιтular character, a middle-aged man who is seeking to reconnect with his roots on the Australian coast. Hoping to buy his old family home and show his teenage son the joys of surfing, the man is stopped by a group of locals led by soft-spoken but threatening Scally. The Surfer‘s characters, like Nic Cage’s Surfer, aren’t given full names and deep origins.

While The Surfer doesn’t have a super complicated plot, the ambiguous elements and questionable perception of the main character might leave audiences with plenty of questions. That’s even before the big twists surrounding the scope of Scally’s cult-like group of beach boys reveal the true reason they’re targeting the Surfer. All of that plays into the film’s themes about power, toxic masculinity, and the importance of going with the flow of life instead of trying to control it or being overwhelmed by it.

How Much Of The Surfer Is In The Surfer’s Head?

The Surfer’s Trippy Visuals Don’t Remove The Stakes Of The Film At All

Despite the trippy visuals and ambiguous elements peppered throughout The Surfer, almost the entire plot of the film actually does happen to Nic Cage’s unnamed protagonist instead of just being in his head. After becoming obsessed with the beach he grew up near, despite repeated warnings and threats from the local beach boys, the Surfer refuses to leave. His increasingly haggard appearance and dehydration-induced behavior push everyone away. The locals even begin to claim that the Surfer is unhoused and that the Bum’s car belongs to him, raising the possibility that it is.

The fact that the Surfer has imagination spots and brief hallucinations, along with his striking similarities to the Bum, can leave the audience wondering if there’s a possibility that it’s all in his head. It’s clear that even the Surfer fears this, as his tearful relief at discovering the PH๏τographer’s proof of his actual car sets him up to finally push through his pain and fight back. While it’s clear that the Surfer is dealing with trauma and personal issues that impact his perception of the world, the film seems to posit that almost everything really is happening to him.

How The Beach Boys Cult Is Really Connected To The Surfer

There’s A Reason The Surfer Is Being Targeted By Scally’s Men

The beach boys in The Surfer are a loose collection of local men who congregate on the beach under the direction of Scally. Despite his apparent day-to-day life as a wealthy yuppie and family man, Scally rules over the other men in his community as a charismatic and cruel leader who encourages attacking others and one another. They believe the beach only belongs to locals and are instantly hostile to any outsiders who come to their space.

This prompts their fight with the Surfer, and their psychological torture of him only becomes worse as it’s implied that local police officer is also a part of the group. This suspicion turns out to true, and the climax reveals that other people around him (like the coffee barista, the real estate agent, and the local bank president) are also part of Scally’s group. Together, they’ve been tormenting the Surfer, making him question his reality. However, it turns out Scally is fully aware of who the Surfer is, remembering him as a former local who left after his father’s death.

As with all his other charges, Scally merely wants to make the Surfer suffer as part of a test to be accepted into their group. This follows Scally’s creed, that one must “suffer before they can surf.” By coming out the other side of this abuse furious and willing to fight, the Surfer is accepted by Scally and is given back his belongings, his car, and even his dream house. The Surfer is accepted into their group, something he initially seems to accept and embrace.

What’s Up With The Bum In The Surfer?

The Surfer’s Contrast Is The Film’s True Tragedy

A direct foil to the Surfer is the Bum, who is also unnamed in the film. The Bum has been living out of his car next to the beach for some time. He purposefully antagonizes Scally because he believes that the man is responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the death of his dog and his son. It’s steadily revealed that the Bum’s son was one of the Beach Boys obsessed with Scally, but turned on him when he stole his girlfriend.

According to Scally, the Bum’s son died when he cracked his skull on a curb while on drugs. He takes no blame for it. However, the reveal that Scally had one of his men kill the Bum’s dog raises more questions about how honest Scally is being, as he’s keen to avoid the subject entirely. The Surfer being forced to burn the Bum’s car as a final rite of pᴀssage is a grim turn that solidifies the contrasting roles of both men in the film, setting the Bum off and leading him to attack the beach boys with a gun.

As opposed to the Surfer’s attack, which led to acceptance by Scally, the Bum is feared because of his lethal potential. As the Bum calls the Surfer out, they both acknowledge what Scally is even as the Surfer accepts it. However, a moment of empathy with the Surfer over wanting to share the ocean with their sons allows the Surfer and his son to escape while the Bum becomes like the unruly ocean, overwhelming Scally with a bullet to the head before killing himself in a dark parallel to the fate of the Surfer’s own father.

Why The Surfer Is So Committed To The Beach

The Beach Offers The Illusion Of Control And The Potential For Peace

One of the key character traits of the Surfer is his affection and commitment to the beach at the center of the film. Having grown up walking distance from the beach, the Surfer has plenty of happy memories of the area. However, his father eventually died there, seemingly of suicide. This prompted his family to move to America, and the trauma lingers within the Surfer. While the Surfer lived his life (but has run into problems with his family and career), he wants to buy back his old family home to reconnect with his roots.

The Surfer’s unspoken hope in buying his family’s old house is to reᴀssert some control in his life. It offers him a chance to reconnect with his son, who otherwise seems unconcerned with his father’s pᴀssions. As his life crumbles around him during the film, he only becomes more desperate. However, it initially seems that the only way to gain access to the beach (as well as the home he’s dedicated to purchasing) is to capitulate to Scally’s ways, which would undercut the implied motivation behind his desire for the house.

The Importance Of Surfing In The Surfer

Those Waves Are Magical

In The Surfer, surfing is much more than a sport or even a way of life. The activity comes to represent life itself, with the Surfer telling his son early in the film how surfing requires you to either go with the flow to ride the wave or be overwhelmed by it and “wipe out.” The water comes to represent a sense of peace and completion that the Surfer is clearly missing in his life, which is why he becomes so obsessed with regaining access to it instead of backing off when Scally and his men threaten him.

In The Surfer, taking to the water on a board is “magical” and can change how one sees the world. This is carried over to Scally’s men, who surf at his leisure and have fully embraced his ideologies to gain a sense of completion and power. Taking to the sea to surf is a metaphor for control and content in one’s life, something the Surfer lacks and the Bum mourns after losing his surfing prodigy son to Scally’s influence. There’s a reason empathizing over surfing is what saves the Surfer and his son in the end.

The Real Meaning Of The Surfer

Scally Is A Scary, Threatening, And Ultimately Pathetic Villain

There’s a lot going on underneath the surface of The Surfer, all rooted in how we see the world and try to change it to suit our needs. There’s a key criticism of machismo and masculinity infused with this, as Scally is never portrayed as anything less than nefarious. Even at his most appealing and charming, there’s an undercurrent of menace baked into the character that becomes most obvious when the Surfer calls out Scally over his treatment of the Bum. This may even be why Scally ordered the Surfer to destroy the Bum’s home, breaking two spirits at once.

This aggressive machismo can also be seen somewhat in the Surfer himself, who initially believes that the trappings of his wealthy life can resolve all of his concerns. Similar to how the Bum undoes all the bravado of Scally’s men when he shows up with a gun, the Surfer’s confidence and sense of self is shaken by a world that never seems to relent in tormenting him. It’s only through a genuine act of empathy, giving back the shark tooth necklace that belonged to the Bum’s son, that he and his own boy escape a grisly fate.

The Surfer condemns those who believe “boys will be boys” or support the idea that men need to blow off steam by being brutal so they can be better “predators and providers.” The Surfer’s son has no interest in the grandstanding of the beach boys or his father’s misguided visions. The PH๏τographer, one of the only female characters in the story with more than one scene, actively helps and is shown to be a good person. The Surfer undercuts the aggressive confidence of machismo to reveal its toxic and weak sides, even as the world comes crashing down around people.