Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.01: The Surfer and Muerte en la Playa

I don't imagine there were a lot of guests scheduled for BUFF, especially the first night where the schedule was Sunday-evening tight, but I wonder how many are backing out. Nicole & Kevin might be joking about how the audience chooses the awards at this festival which means there's still democracy here, but the stories about people getting arrested by ICE folks trying to meet quotas at Logan aren't good, and film festivals sure seem like something where someone might come in on a tourist visa only to have someone who might have looked the other way before decide that was working. Like, I might not risk it.

Bleh.

Still, it was a fun night where the studio movie with indie roots and the restoration shared a theme of rage leading to murder in a sunny beach community. If you want more, The Surfer director Lorcan Finnegan's debut feature, Without Name, is currently sitting on my shelf in a disc released by Yellow Veil, a partner label of Vinegar Syndrome, who are apparently behind the restoration/re-release of Muerte en la Playa. The weird horror community crosses over a lot!


The Surfer

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Huh, I don't think I've ever heard Julian McMahon's actual accent before (and maybe I haven't; if the Sydney-born actor is laying Perth on something thick). There's something kind of funny about how he's been playing [North] American folks for twenty-five years without really scanning as Australian while Nicolas Cage's character is supposedly Australian but they've got to spend a couple minutes claiming that a few years in California twenty years ago has him talking like Nic Cage.

Or maybe it was longer; whatever the length, he's back in Australia now, intending to take his son (Finn Little) to the beach where he surfed growing up, pointing out the childhood home that he is repurchasing from the crest of a wave, presuming he can put together the financing to beat a last-minute all-cash offer. Since then, though, the locals have been bullying any outsider who comes to the supposedly-public beach, led by Scott "Scally" Callahan (McMahon), a motivational speaker who whips the local men into a frenzy. As Cage's surfer continues to haunt the beach, various things start going wrong, and the only ally he's got is a bum living out of his car (Nic Cassim) who blames Scally and his crew for his son's death.

The Surfer is the sort of Nicolas Cage movie that makes you wonder what would have happened if Cage hadn't taken the role. it might have been more timid, or it might have been the same but more unnerving because we're not looking for him to Nic Cage it up. He's good at this, and good in this movie, but it's not necessarily going to take one by surprise; we can sort of track how Cage will play his escalation from seemingly reasonable everyman to deadpan sarcasm to manic violence from previous experience at this point.

I do like the compact setup, though, with director Lorcan Finnegan and screenwriter Thomas Martin clearly establishing stakes and how the title character is trying to recapture things that are gone, in large part due to his own self-destructive action, and seeing up little bits of entitlement that keep him from being totally sympathetic and get him deeper and deeper in trouble. It's so keenly and carefully set out up front that what comes after is kind of drawn out as a result, stripping away everything he's rebuilt in maybe too finely granular a fashion, before a turn that maybe requires more or less of the movie, because there's a whole other basket of issues that demand a bit of attention after that, from the "localism" that seems to drive the folks on the beach to how Scally's guru status is likely more about giving people permission to be cruel than channeling aggression.

The film's got a look, though, a real way of getting across how Australia is unforgivingly beautiful (it is a place where dehydration can sneak up on you while you enjoy the sunshine and interesting plants and animals), and an eye for how the rich folks near this beach are kind of cosplaying at being hooligans enough for it to become real. The comic timing of each new bit of cruelty is impeccable, and the frustration and heatstroke making this guy feel even more unstuck in time is effective.

I hate to be a "cut 15 minutes" guy, especially since the grindhouse flicks that inspired this were often sort of padded themselves, but it does feel like there's a 90-minute version that attacks the viewer as ruthlessly as the opening does throughout rather than vamping because it's going to take a couple of days to wear this guy down. Maybe there's not quite a correct pace for this story, and you've just got to roll with how good many of the moments are.


Muerte en la Playa (Death on the Beach)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon or direct from Vinegar Syndrome

You never totally know about IMDB entries for filmmakers outside the English-speaking mainstream, but to watch Muerte en la Playa is to be surprised that this comes near the end of the career of Enrique Gómez Vadillo rather than the start; it's got the feel of a young filmmaker trying to get things out as an outsider rather than a veteran who has had a decade or so and plenty of opportunities to hone his craft. That's both good and bad; transgressive energy pushes the film through periods where there are awkward talent gaps between some of the folks involved.

It opens with a nastily sexual murder at a boarding school that will have it closed, sending student David (Andrés Bonfiglio) home to his wealthy mother Lorena (Sonia Infante) and her latest paramour, Paul (Rodolfo de Anda), who seems an honest and pleasant enough gigolo. Lorena figures this will be a good time to start teaching David the family business; although she is disappointed that he would rather spend time with a pair of male hippies and deaf-mute servant Ruffo (Antonio Eric) than the various "secretaries" she has recruited to show him the ropes and prove he's the sort of man she imagines him to be, even if Paul and the rest quickly suss out that he is gay. Eventually, he finds new friends Tony (Humberto Lobato) and Nubia (Angela Alaltriste), while Paul quietly makes sure that the unusual amount of dead bodies showing up near the estate aren't investigated too closely.

I am mildly curious about the sources of Vinegar Syndrome's restoration, because the very start and end of the movie look like they are sourced from VHS copies, priming the audience to see it as the sort of disreputable, shot-on-video underground cinema of the 1980s, except that it quickly shifts to 35mm film and the sort of pretty darn passable cinematography that comes from pointing the camera at people with good physiques in sunny locations and not messing up the framing or the lighting, even if the point of view often movies like someone who just got their first camcorder for Christmas. Much of the rest of the movie feels like they only had so much time and film, so there's not always a great take or two to when they got to the editing bay.

Or they might have been going for a certain level of camp from the start; there are lines that it's hard to imagine being written in sincere fashion, although the actors do a fair job of delivering them without winking or stumbling over just how the character is supposed to be feeling to say this. The film isn't delivering great performances, but everyone is a well-cast match of the sort of guy they're meant to be.

Mostly, the vibe is right; one can feel the movie riding the line between the characters who are cosmopolitan enough to accept David as gay and the ones who will view that with contempt or disappointment. Squint, and you can see the bodies piling up as Lorena refuses to see her son for what he is in more ways than one. Any sort of message you might try to get from the film might be mixed at best and the ending is a bloody mess, but you can't really argue that maybe there's an argument to make being in the closet less scary in circa 1991 Mexico.

Or maybe it's not that deep, but just a portion of sleaze just capable enough to be watchable while also being quite ridiculous.