616 movie review

616 Wilford Lane Review: A Refreshing Take On The Haunted House Genre

A new take on a horror story as old as time as we bring you our 616 Wilford Lane review.

A grieving man relocates his two teenage daughters to a charming town and into their dream home. Quickly, the dream becomes an inescapable nightmare.

A family looking to make a move to a small town and just so happen to pick the most haunted house in the neighbourhood.

Starring John Littlefield, Jessica Chancellor and Alyson Gorske 616 Wilford Lane is introduced with a bone-chilling CCTV introduction.

We get a little wink and nod to a horror classic and what follows is scarily realistic footage that drops us straight into heart in mouth territory.

The movie is shot very differently from similar horrors in the genre.

One minute we are met with mouthwatering visuals and the next we’re in a TV-style set-up of camera angles and dialogue but it’s the dialogue that allows 616 Wilford Lane to stand out from the crowd.

As a whole, the film is well structured if albeit a little shaky in parts and is let down by the dialogue but how the film is presented is rather wonderful in its approach and it has a wonderful arc to it and not to mention a solid ending.

A horror movie with a solid ending is no easy feat.

The last 10 minutes is a solid display of storytelling and as a whole feels somewhat unique and refreshing.

It just completely sneaks up out of nowhere and I certainly didn’t see it coming!

Clocking in at a runtime of 86 minutes the film absolutely flies by and with a dash of good scares and a story that somewhat grips you it’s well worth a watch.

It’s certainly far from perfect with some outlandish plot points here and there but aside from your stereotype cast, there’s still enough here to salvage and to thoroughly enjoy.

Utilising the CCTV cameras that captured the chilling horror in the beginning and then scattering it throughout the film is a rather genius touch.

There are a few little cameos in this particular production including one from the legend that is Eric Roberts himself. 

All of this feels well rounded and contributes overall to a rather solid package to take to market.

It may not be a film for everyone but horror fans will surely appreciate the effort that has been put into this production to make it stand out in such a saturated market.

616 Wilford Lane review by Sean Evans 

A refreshing take on the haunted house genre that brings something different to an already cluttered table. 616 Wilford Lane isn’t without its flaws but it delivers with an interesting arc and some solid scenes

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616 Wilford Lane

Where to Watch

John Littlefield (Jim) Eric Roberts (David) Alyson Gorske (Staci) Stevonte Hart (Miles) Eliza Roberts (Joan) Jasmine Waltz (Austyn) Jessica Chancellor (Randy) Jon Herrmann (Matt) Nadine Stenovitch (Robin) Don Scribner (Sheriff)

Mark S. Allen, Dante Yore

A grieving man relocates his two teen daughters to a charming town--and into their dream home. But the dream quickly becomes an inescapable nightmare.

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616 wilford lane.

Directed by Dante Yore

A grieving man relocates his two teen daughters to a charming town and into their dream home. Quickly the dream becomes an inescapable nightmare.

Eric Roberts Jasmine Waltz Jessica Chancellor Stevonte Hart Don Scribner Mark DeCarlo John Littlefield Mikaela Gilden Alyson Gorske Jon Herrmann Kelly Savanna Deaton

Director Director

Co-director co-director.

Mark S. Allen

Writers Writers

Howard Burd Dante Yore Mark S. Allen

Horror Action

Releases by Date

17 may 2021, releases by country.

More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by DreamScape40 ★★★

Was curious how the ending was going to play out there. And for a bit I thought I was watching a soft porn film. I mean you got the beautiful location with this gorgeous house. Then the wonky actors.

It also kind of reminded me of the author Bentley Little with his mystery supernatural vibes which is how Eric Roberts portrayed along with a few of the other town folk.

Review by Spookie ★★½ 2

Paranormal Activity meets Wild Things.

Review by B E R T ★★

Production values of a soft core porn flick, actors who look at least 30 playing high school students, completely toneless (is it a horror, drama or domestic thriller?). It’s a dud, tried to channel the Paranormal Activity franchise and failed, I did enjoy the cheesy acting and the cast were actually all rather good looking, but just kinda boring and nothing new.

Review by Curtis ★★★

In 2005, a missing piece of Papyrus 115 was discovered, proving earlier suggestions that 666, historically known to be the number of the beast, is incorrect. The sign of the Beast is 616. - Opening text

After the death of his wife, a widower (John Littlefield) gets a mansion in a gated community from Megan Faux for a steal, and moves himself and his two daughters (Alyson Gorske, Jessica Chancellor) in for a life of luxurious mourning. But what they don't know is that their new house, 616 Wilford Lane , was the site of an Amityvillesque family annihilation mere months before. And as the interior cameras begin to show fuzzy, night-vision paranormal activity, it becomes clear that the stylish multilevel…

Review by MentalTorment ★★

A good ending on a bad movie still adds up to a bad movie.

Review by Nik Caesar ★½

1.5 donuts out of 5. Curse you Eric Roberts!

Review by greeebb ★

scary, but not for the reasons you would expect

Review by Abner Doom ★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

I’m stunned!

616 Wilford Lane is a movie that so successfully skirts past any narrative obligations for 79 minutes of its 85 minute runtime. There are nuggets of separate stories but little to no attempt to tie them all together. I’ll try:

The story is simple. Dad and his two daughters move into a McMansion after a devastating loss. However, their dream home proves to be something of a nightmare as they uncover a dark secret in the house’s history. 

Again, I had to tie quite a bit together there. What this movie really shows is some dude and two women, all of whom belong in the 26-45 age demographic. Through the movie, they witness THINGS and hear NOISES and…

Review by Trent ★½

I would say this is the poor man's Amityville horror but there's already 100 other "Amityville" movies that do it even worse somehow. The only thing that sets this apart is the last minute out of nowhere twist that left me laughing.

Review by Farra ★★

so many plot twists in one setting!

Review by tyreehoffman ★★

This was pretty much your standard Ghost/haunted house story (with surveillance footage that really teeters on Paranormal Activity plagiarism) right up until that twist. And then they hit you with another twist. This was easily a 1.5-star for me until that first twist.

Also, Jasmine Waltz (Austyn, the realtor) is what you get when you order Megan Fox on Wish. But not all Wish products are bad.

Review by Dustin Baker ★★

Creaky and lethargic as all hell, I'm not sure what the final intention was ever supposed to be here. It plays by pretty tired beats well worn by every other ghostly that pops up, but then spins everything into some far fetched twist in the finale in desperation for some uniqueness.

At least Eric Roberts still looks happy.

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616 Wilford Lane: Is the 2021 Movie Based on Real Life?

‘616 Wilford Lane’ revolves around the Patten family, who move to an opulent home to reset their lives. After losing his wife, Jim Van Patten relocates with his two teenage daughters to Auburn, California. The trio barely recovers from their mourning phase when paranormal activities occur in their new abode. The 2021 horror film is helmed by Mark S. Allen and Dante Yore. If it gave you the creeps and made you sleep with one eye open, you might be interested to learn if it is inspired by a true story. So, for the ones who resonate with that thought, here’s all you need to know!

616 Wilford Lane is a Fictional Tale

No, ‘616 Wilford Lane’ is not a true story. Though some speculations suggest it might be, there is no hard evidence for the same. The movie is the brainchild of three writers, Howard Burd, Dante Yore, and Mark S. Allen, who tried to adapt a few real elements in the movie, such as the location. As per reports, the principal photography of the movie took place in and around Auburn, California, where the story originally unfolds.

The movie’s title, ‘616 Wilford Lane,’ is not an actual location in the city, but the ‘616’ is seemingly derived from a new revelation. In theology and other references, 666 is considered the number of the antichrist, beast, or devil. But purportedly , a discovery of a fragment from the New Testament shows that it is indeed the number, 616.

In the opening sequence of the movie, a similar message flashes on the screen, “In 2005, a missing piece of Papyrus 115 was discovered, proving earlier suggestions that 666, historically known to be the number of the beast, is incorrect. The sign of the beast is 616.” Many horror genre tropes have been utilized in this film, such as a family moving into a new house, inexplicable events out of the blue, strange neighbors, uncontrollable teenagers, and incompetent police officers. But the movie deviates from the norm during its 10-minute climax with an unforeseeable twist.

Although the ending answered most questions raised throughout the movie, it received mixed reviews from the audience. Nonetheless, the filmmakers carried an old trope and took the creative leap of altering the ending by bringing something refreshing to the genre instead of old and meandering twists. In the history of horror cinema, countless movies have a similar storyline of a family relocating to a haunted house. A few such films with a congruent premise to ‘616 Wilford Lane’ based on a true story, are ‘The Haunting in Connecticut,’ ‘The Conjuring,’ and ‘The Amityville Horror.’

Similar to the ‘ Paranormal Activity ’ franchise, the family sets up a CCTV camera after the events become stranger by the day. Most of the hauntings showcased in the movie parallel those in the long-running horror film franchise. In conclusion, ‘616 Wilford Lane’ is a thrilling cinematic experience but not based on a real-life story. That said, it borrows several elements from theology and movies with identical themes. However, as the plot thickens and the final sequences play out, the audience gets their money’s worth due to the unique and extraordinary ending.

Read More: Best Horror Movie Plot Twists of All Time

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Learn about comics' real-life impact with trailer for Marvel's 616 documentary series

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

Stan Lee used to say that the Marvel Comics universe was ″the world outside your window." Another legendary comic writer, Alan Moore, coined the designation ″616″ to refer to the Marvel universe's place in a larger multiverse. Both those concepts come together in the title of the upcoming Disney+ documentary series Marvel's 616 , which explores how Marvel comics and characters have influenced our own real-life world. You can exclusively watch the first trailer for Marvel's 616 above.

Marvel's 616 consists of eight episodes, directed by different accomplished filmmakers and tackling various facets of Marvel. The first episode, ″The Japanese Spider-Man,″ is directed by David Gelb ( Jiro Dreams of Sushi ) and tells the story of the most interesting Marvel adaptation you've probably never heard of before. In 1978, Marvel struck a deal with Japanese TV giant Toei to adapt the company's most popular superhero for Japanese audiences. The result involved a giant robot and a cool car, and became an important influence on Japanese pop culture. Japanese Spider-Man (a.k.a Supaidāman ) has rarely been seen outside of Japan, so the footage will knock your socks off.

The second episode is titled ″Higher, Further, Faster," after the tagline of writer Kelly Sue DeConnick's popular Captain Marvel comics that were a big influence on the 2019 film starring Brie Larson. Directed by Gillian Jacobs ( Community ), the episode introduces viewers to the women who have played important roles in Marvel's history. The third episode, ″Amazing Artisans,″ is directed by Clay Jeter and focuses on two international Marvel artists, Javier Garrón and Natacha Bustos, who live in Barcelona and use their life experiences to influence their work on popular young superheroes Miles Morales and Moon Girl.

Episode four, ″Lost and Found,″ is directed by Paul Scheer ( Black Monday, The League) and features him exploring the most obscure, wild, and forgotten Marvel characters (rest assured: there are plenty of them). The fifth episode, ″Suit Up!," is directed by Andrew Rossi (Page One: Inside the New York Times) and focuses on cosplay culture. There are interviews with several cosplayers as they prepare for last year's New York Comic Con, so if you are missing the in-person NYCC experience this year, this episode should work as a substitute. Virtual NYCC will have plenty of panels , but they won't have the irreplaceable experience of walking around so many unique cosplayers.

The sixth episode, ″Unboxed,″ is directed by Sarah Ramos (Parenthood) and explores the ″symbiotic relationship″ between comics and toys. Which came first, which influenced the other? The answer is not always the same, as indicated by interviews with Marvel toy experts, designers at Hasbro and Funko, and passionate collectors. Episode seven, ″The Marvel Method," is directed by Brian Oakes and takes a close look at the creation of the new Iron Man 2020 comic. There are interviews with writer Dan Slott , artist Pete Woods, and editor Tom Brevoort as they work to get the comic completed by deadline. In addition, the interviews provide historical background on the development of the titular Marvel Method as it was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby , for better and worse.

Last but certainly not least is the eight episode, "Marvel Spotlight." Directed by Alison Brie ( Community , GLOW ), this episode follows a group of students at Florida's Brandon High School as they put on performances of the new Marvel Spotlight plays and realize how much characters like Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl speak to their own high school experiences.

All episodes of Marvel's 616 begin streaming on Disney+ on Nov. 20. Check out the trailer and preview clips above.

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• Marvel unveils one-act plays featuring Ms. Marvel, Thor, other heroes
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New Violet Lantern Is a Lore-Shaking Change to Green Lantern's Mythology

The new 'nightwing' is revealed by dc, and it's literally the last person i ever dreamed it could be, avengers revamp is recasting captain marvel as an official marvel villain - theory explained.

Marvel didn't invent the idea of a comic book Multiverse, or the idea of their most iconic characters re-imagined across an endless number of realities, parallel universes, and incredible 'What If?' alternatives. Of course, there's never any doubt which is the true, original Marvel Universe: found in the reality designated Earth-616 .

Over the years, this bit of comic book trivia has migrated into the movies, planted as a winking Easter Egg for fans in the know. First having Thor: The Dark World theorize a '616 Universe,' later quietly confirming the washed-up Spider-Man is the original Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse . But with Jake Gyllenhaal's Mysterio explicitly calling out  'Earth-616' and the MCU Multiverse , more fans than ever before will know the truth about Marvel's main reality. Which also means a new generation of people asking the same question: why is it called the 616 Universe, anyway?

We're here to explain this mystery, from its conflicted origins to the attitude Marvel's own writers have to the name, and why the '616' designation might not even be accurate anymore. One way or another, the truth is going to surprise you.

What '616' Really Means in Marvel's Multiverse

The question of when and how Marvel's 'prime' reality earned the designation '616' is easy to answer, even if the motivations behind it have been the subject off disagreement. The term first appeared in the pages of  The Daredevils #7 (1983), a UK comic series featuring multiple heroes, led by Marvel's own UK superhero Captain Britain . To keep a long story short, the Captain (Brian Braddock) gets caught up in an interdimensional court case over the destruction of a reality. Braddock soon finds he is just one of an endless number of parallel reality variations making up a larger Captain Britain Corps. To distinguish Brian from the others, he is referred to as  "Captain Britain of Earth 616."

RELATED: Is Peggy Carter Stealing The Captain Britain Role in The MCU?

The short story titled "Rough Justice" is credited to writer Alan Moore and artist Alan Davis, so it  should be easy to find out who had the idea of assigning a number to Marvel's original reality. When Davis was credited for the assigning of the number, he claimed it was the work of prior  Captain Britain writer Dave Thorpe. The number? Davis said it reflected Thorpe's cynical views on superhero stories, giving their universe a variation of The Mark of The Beast ('666'). However, since Thorpe is on the record as a fan of superhero comics, Alan Moore seems a simple candidate. The best explanation tied to the mind behind  Watchmen and  The Killing Joke is that the number is a random one--but intended to subvert the DC books at the time, which suggested their original universe was 'Earth-One' as opposed to a truly random example.

Marvel's Top Executives Actually Hate '616'

The number of times that the term '616' has popped up in Marvel projects would lead the average viewer to assume the designation is a point of pride, or at least a sense of tradition now honored by Marvel editors, writers, and artists. Ironically, it seems that the justification for Moore selecting 'Earth 616' came to embody the opposite message of what Marvel Comics would later wish. To Moore, suggesting there was nothing special about THIS Marvel Universe had meaning. But to the later editors charged with making Marvel stories  feel important , fans can probably see the problem.

After Brian Michael Bendis struck massive success with  Ultimate Spider-Man , re-imagining the hero in an alternate reality--one which would eventually come to be called the Ultimate Universe--the possibilities and 'What If?'s seemed limitless. It was in that window of mid-to-late 2000s that Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort spoke publicly about his dislike for the '616' number. When asked his opinion by Newsarama , Marvel Editor in chief Joe Quesada didn't mince words either:

I never use it, I hate the term pure and simple and agree with Tom’s assessment of it. I can’t remember ever hearing it in the office and only really see it used online for the most part... I think the term really came into vogue when the Ultimate Universe came into prominence, but in my world, the language and distinctions are simple, there is the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe. Anything other than that reeks of all that DC Earth 1, Earth 2, Earth Prime stuff which I’ve never really taken to, but then again, I got into DC when they got rid of all that stuff so it was from and for a different era than my own.

Technically, Marvel's Universe Isn't '616' Anymore

The point being made by Quesada makes sense to regular readers, since the only two ongoing and constant realities in Marvel's catalogue really are the main Marvel one, and the Ultimate variation. But just as DC's expanding Multiverse was culled and folded together by the  Crisis on Infinite Earths , Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic set out to the do the same at Marvel with  Secret Wars . The 2015 event combined realities and heroes onto one massive Battleworld... before destroying most, and disappearing Reed and Sue of the Fantastic Four along with them.

Of course, it only  seemed like the Fantastic Four were killed. The final issue,  Secret Wars #9 revealed that while the rest of the Multiverse had been erased, the Richards' had the power (along with their kids) to recreate the Multiverse as it had been before. Which, as Brevoort explained to  CBR at the time, meant the '616' designation was actually no longer accurate:

It's effectively a new multiverse. The biggest and most important thing here that nobody in the world will like, and that I'm the only one that keeps poking at, is the fact that the Marvel Universe is no longer the 616. I don't know if by the end of "Secret Wars" #9 there are 616 universes yet. There will be an infinite number of them. Realities that we've known and new ones that we've never visited before are being constantly created, and then mapped and explored by Reed and his family. They started by restoring the Marvel Universe. So really, it's now the Prime Universe.

So there you have it, folks! The explanation for Marvel's superheroes residing in The 616 Universe , and the perfectly clear reason why the title isn't even accurate. And despite the editors (and at one time the writers) disliking the designation completely... there's just no stopping it.

MORE: Will Marvel Finally Reverse The WORST Spider-Man Story?

Source: Newsarama , John Reppion , CBR

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For some years now, Nicolas Cage has been a genre unto himself: desperate, deranged, deliciously cheesy, with that special mastery of dialogue that moves seamlessly from a panting whisper to a bellow and back again. Put Cage’s name above the title and your film has an immediate brand that not only rides over script glitches but does a full Fast and Furious speed-jump over the top of any yawning gaps in probability.

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The point here is that Nic Cage is a sweating, dirty, increasingly crazed dude having successive breathless pitched battles with local delinquents, a he-man cult based on the beach and the whole spectrum of Australia’s scary fauna, from the kookaburras that laugh at him to the snake that slithers around him when he’s hiding in the bushes at night. Despite his dearth of the kinds of certain skills Liam Neeson might bring to the table, he eventually will triumph against the bullies. And do we believe that? Totally! That’s the Cage brand!

RELATED:  Cannes Film Festival Photos

The young ones here are mean. Their elders – Nic’s own generation, supposedly, though that’s another stretch – are meaner. Spying from the carpark where he ends up making a kind of encampment after his ejection from the beach, he sees his old schoolmate Scott Callinan (Julian McMahon) conducting rituals that seem to define a kind of cult. The men and boys kneel, chant and growl like dogs. Maybe they’re a little excessive, says a local mother who comes to get a coffee from a stand at the beach, but it keeps out the riff raff. Nic can’t get a coffee. He offers his watch as collateral. It’s stolen. So is his surfboard, so is his phone, so are his shoes. He can’t even get water from the toilet block; the sink is guarded by an Australian version of Cerberus, a furiously barking chained monster. And yet, somehow, it never occurs to him to drive away. That’s how exploitation films work. Everyone seems to consent to the horror.s Cage Battle

The fact our hero simply refuses to go anywhere, even to get a bottle of water, while he still can really is several steps over the barrier of believability. Maybe that hurdle could have been cleared with some brisker editing; if the risks were more frequent and the obstacles insuperable, if the whole thing snapped along faster so that there was no time to feel the suspension of disbelief sagging, the sense of peril would steamroller its absurdity into the sand. As it is, The Surfer is an object lesson in how to make a film economically by using a single location, a bunch of surfing extras and some stock footage of lizards. Which is the grindhouse ethic at work, for sure.

Title:  The Surfer Festival:  Cannes (Midnight Screenings) Director:  Lorcan Finnegan Screenwriter: Thomas Martin Cast:  Nicolas Cage, Julian Mcmahon, Nic Cassim, Miranda Tapsell, Alexander Bertrand, Justin Rosniak, Rahel Romahn, Finn Little, Charlotte Maggi Sales agent:  WME Independent (North America), North.Five.Six (International) Running time:  1 hr 39 min

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616: Black Church Politics & Messy Authenticity with Nancy French

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‘The Strangers: Chapter 1’ Review: Crowded House

A reboot of the 2008 home invasion film “The Strangers” brings back masked assailants and brutal violence but leaves originality behind.

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By Erik Piepenburg

The key to a terrific scary home invasion horror movie is not just how domesticity gets breached but why. It’s great to have a determined aggressor, sympathetic victims and a brutal invasion that’s contained and sustained. But to what end?

Yet some of the best home invasion films — “Funny Games,” “Them” — don’t supply easy answers. “The Strangers,” Bryan Bertino’s terrifying 2008 thriller starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as a couple under siege, didn’t either. It kept the invaders’ motives and their identities mysterious, amping up the devil-you-don’t-know terrors with a sense of randomness that was despairing. The premise and execution were simple. The payoff was a gut punch.

On its face, “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” the first of three new films in a “Strangers” reboot from the director Renny Harlin (“ A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master ”), checks all the same boxes. But the hapless script — written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland and based on the original — offers nothing fresh in a tiring 91 minutes, and nothing daring to justify a new “Strangers” film, let alone a new series, especially when Bertino’s formidable film is streaming on Max .

This new tale begins with Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and her boyfriend, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), taking a fifth anniversary road trip through the Pacific Northwest. When their car breaks down in a rural Oregon town, they meet a seen-it-before who’s who of horror movie yokeldom: unsmiling boys, sweaty bumpkin mechanics, a diner waitress whose eyes scream “run, if you know what’s good.”

As Maya and Ryan wait for their car to be fixed, they decide to spend the night at a secluded rental cabin. Under darkness there’s a knock at the door and, true to the home invasion formula, our leading sweethearts get terrorized until dawn inside the cabin and through the woods by a trio of assailants with big weapons and indefinite end goals. They have face coverings too, making menace out of the same blank-faced creepiness the villains embodied in the original film and its 2018 sequel.

Harlin is known for action films, including “Die Hard 2,” and those chops come in handy here, especially when he’s left hanging by a sleepy middle section of frantic chases and failed attacks that feel like padding. Cat-and-mouse games can be compelling, but here , like a “Tom and Jerry” marathon, they get repetitive, dulling the impact of the violence. Petsch and Gutierrez have sufficient enough rapport, and border on sharing a couple’s chemistry as the final stretch comes to a too-predictable conclusion.

The film’s few thrilling moments have little to do with blood and guts and more with the juxtaposition of dread and song, as when Joanna Newsom’s lilting hymn “Sprout and the Bean” and Twisted Sister’s power anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It” pop up unexpectedly to disorient the action. These and other oddball musical interludes provide too-fleeting hints of what might have been had this film sought a novel household takeover, not the same old.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Rated R for heaps of ruthless violence and general despair. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters.

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The Surfer review – beach bum Nic Cage surfs a high tide of toxic masculinity

An office drone must suffer the machismo of an Australian coastal town in this barmy, low-budget thriller about a would-be wave-chaser

H ere is a gloriously demented B-movie thriller about a middle-aged man who wants to ride a big wave and the grinning local bullies who regard the beach as home soil. “Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” they shout at any luckless tourist who dares to visit picturesque Lunar Bay on Australia’s south-western coast, where the land is heavy with heat and colour. Tempers are fraying; it’s a hundred degrees in the shade. The picture crash-lands at the Cannes film festival like a wild-eyed, brawling drunk.

The middle-aged man is unnamed, so let’s call him Nic Cage. Lorcan Finnegan’s film, after all, is as much about Cage – his image, his career history, his acting pyrotechnics – as it is about surfing or the illusory concept of home. The Surfer sets the star up as a man on the edge – a sad-sack office drone who desperately wants to belong – and then shoves him unceremoniously clear over the cliff-edge. Before long, our hero is living out of his car in the parking lot near the dunes, drinking from puddles, foraging for food from bins, and scheming all the while to make his way down to the shore.

Nobody wants him. His desperation is pathetic. He’s a little like the character that Burt Lancaster played in The Swimmer, if Lancaster had been regularly beaten up by his neighbours and occasionally crapped on by parrots. Also, if Lancaster’s role had been performed by Cage.

“I thought you were an American,” a passing photographer remarks at one point, which provides the convenient prompt for the hero to explain that he was born in Australia before moving to California as a kid, which is presumably why his accent sounds exactly like that of Nic Cage. He has a dream of buying a house on Clifftop Drive and of riding the waves on his board every morning, except that the man is fooling no one. He is an unwelcome outsider and therefore counts as fair game.

As his humiliations pile up, Cage rises brilliantly to the challenge, cranking the acting dial from befuddled to vexed to outraged to volcanic. The effort is such that one half-fears for his safety. The man’s face is so red you could practically fry an egg on his forehead.

“Before you can surf you must suffer,” says Scally (Julian McMahon), the alpha male ringleader of the bullies on the beach; he has the smile of a great white shark and a weekday gig as a corporate raider. It’s a line that serves as a mantra for the Lunar Beach Boys, with their hazing rituals and toxic masculinity, although conceivably it may also be referencing Cage, an actor who tends to break himself down in order to build himself up, who likes to foster the impression that he’s constantly on the verge of wiping out. If Cage’s hero is going down, one assumes it won’t be without a fight. If he somehow manages to win through, his victory will surely come at an enormous personal cost. All the poor man wants to do is surf. But first he must suffer, and few performers do it better.

Crisply scripted by Thomas Martin and directed by Finnegan with a pleasing, no-frills intensity, The Surfer feels resolutely old-school. It’s a low-budget, hard-hitting comic bruiser of a picture: a midlife-crisis movie dressed up as a 1970s exploitation flick. Finnegan’s film premieres in the rambunctious midnight screening slot at Cannes. That’s probably the right call, given its wild, roiling, hallucinogenic vibe, although I wonder if the festival selectors might have missed a trick. They ought to have screened The Surfer on the beach for the locals. They could have put all the critics behind cordons and made them watch the film from afar.

• The Observer
• Cannes 2024
• Cannes film festival
• Drama films
• Nicolas Cage

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