Directed by Lorcan Finnegan | Written by Thomas Martin | 100 min | ▲▲1/2 | on VOD 

This is a tribute to the Ozploitation movies of the 1970s and ’80s, like Ted Kotcheff’s Wake In Fright, while also being that self-contained thing that’s becoming a genre unto itself: A Nicolas Cage movie. He doesn’t discriminate much in his career choices, but every once in awhile we’ll get a Mandy, a Pig, or a Dream Scenario — this one isn’t quite in that league, but it is somewhere in the ballpark.

Nic’s the nameless, titular surfer, a divorced father looking to buy his former family home on the hillside above a gorgeous Australian beach. The beach is the domain of a gang of grade-a asshole surf bums, led by Julian McMahon, whose mantra is, “don’t live here, don’t surf here.” These fellows bully him and steal his surfboard.

Or do they? The saturated colours, jagged edits, and woozy visuals help take us on a journey into his paranoia and madness, and while that’s plenty convincing, it also pulls its trigger a little too early for there to be much tension around whether he’s delusional or not — he clearly is. It turns the whole movie into a psychedelic nightmare spiked with occasional comic effect.

The final act of, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” brings him into the gang, but he’s such an unreliable narrator it’s hard to know what the stakes are, or really care, in this hellish vision of toxic masculinity. As usual, Cage is nothing if not committed. That, along with some wild and wooly world-building, helps carry the day.