Nicolas Cage’s latest performance in Lorcan Finnegan’s surreal thriller The Surfer sees the Hollywood star tap into his staple unhinged magic for this sun-soaked descent into madness.
The Longlegs star portrays the titular unnamed surfer who returns to his hometown in Australia to buy back his childhood home.
However, when he and his son (played by Finn Little) try to surf the nearby beach, a group of locals led by the charismatic yet territorial Scally (Julian McMahon) torment him to the point of losing his mind.
As the surfer starts to spiral, his desperation becomes clear when he’s left no choice but to scrounge for food and almost resorts to devouring the body of a rat he crossed paths with earlier.
Speaking exclusively to Express Online, director Finnegan recalled: “We had two rats, one that had a mechanical part to bite him and another one that was soft for whacking against the card.
“So he threw that away and he’s supposed to find it the next day and think about taking a bite out of it. He picked it up and that’s as far as it was in the script.”
Fans who are familiar with Cage’s repertoire will already know the unique star always goes above and beyond with his roles, especially when they involve a fractured mental state.
In a scene that’s destined to become quoted by Cage-heads worldwide – think ‘Not the bees!’ from The Wicker Man – the surfer keeps the rat in his pocket and uses it as an improvised weapon against one of Scally’s crew, Pitbull (Alexander Bertrand).
Finnegan continued: “But then Nic put it in his pocket and he wasn’t really sure why yet, but he was kind of formulating an idea.
“The art department wanted the rat back, they were like, ‘We need to keep that, we only have one’, and he’s like, ‘No, no, I need to keep it in my pocket’.”
It turns out the bizarre fight scene was all Cage’s idea, having watched an iconic movie star pull off a similar move in a film from the 1950s.
“Then, I think it was the next day, he was telling me he had this idea that’s related to Sabrina, the Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart movie,” the director explained.
“There’s a scene where Humphrey Bogart takes an olive out the jar and puts it into another guy’s mouth and says ‘Eat it!’
“He’d rewatched that film just before coming to Australia and thought it was just hilarious, so he had this weird connection and wanted to take the rat and shove it into Pitbull’s mouth during the fight and say ‘Eat it!’ So that was another bit of Cage magic.
“I think there are little lines he’ll give the film if he loves the process of it because he feels like it needs a little bit of something.”
Movie buffs can rejoice as Sabrina is currently streaming on both NOW and Paramount+, giving you a chance to discover the origins of Nicolas Cage’s latest stroke of mad genius.
The Surfer is in cinemas now.