Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear is a passion project from Douglas Burke. He not only wrote, directed produced, made the music and acted in this, but his real life son plays the protagonist. What is a drama doing on this horror focussed blog? Well, this movie is so darn weird that it felt like a good fit, this almost felt like a companion piece to Tommy Wiseau's legendary The Room with how earnest and straight faced this is played, despite being off the wall crazy.
Sage (Sage Burke) is a teenage boy who used to enjoy surfing, that is until one dark day when he nearly drowned. Since then, the boy has been fearful of the sea, instead choosing to fish from it instead. One day, while fishing on the beach, he catches something, but is surprised to see it is a man (Douglas Burke) who has been pulled out of the ocean. This man soon reveals himself to be the spirit of his father, a person that Sage never knew. The spirit imparts his wisdom onto his son, providing him with the cryptic knowledge of how to conquer his fear, he also heads him in the direction of an old friend, Captain 'Banks' Bancroft (Gerald James), who Sage is told will be able to give him lots of money.
The film is an extreme slow burn, there are only a few scene changes, with most the movie being long spoken essays from Douglas. The first half takes place on a beach, with the monotoned Sage readily believing that this strange man who has washed up on the beach is not only his missing father, but that the man had only been given a body for a few hours as a favour from God! The washed up man displays some wildly emotive acting when he reacts to the pain of being able to 'feel'. Douglas later appears as a disabled man, again some really out there acting is displayed!
The second half of the film has Sage arriving at the offices at a naval base, where Banks tells him about the bonkers backstory for what happened to his father. This brings a paranormal element into the film, but again is filmed statically with just the two characters conversing with each other. The directing and quality throughout gave a feel of a straight to TV movie, but it fitted the vibe really well.
To be honest, I had heard of Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear before I sat down to watch it. I was readily prepared for how bizarre it was going to be. A lot of the film is made up of footage of Sage surfing, and for the most part this fits in well as this is very much a story revolving around the ocean. At one point the action moves to around a real beached whale, with the spirit using it as a metaphor for people not willing to take a leap of faith. Some of the backdrops later on didn't look the best, from the featureless doctor's office, to what appeared to be an artificial background. As slim as the plot was, I wasn't really ever bored, it helps I was cleaning my house at the same time, I feel if I had actually sat down to watch this I may not have been so entertained. The last five minutes or so break down into a series of static photos with music playing over it. The photos of Sage surfing were impressive, but this was the moment where boredom did set in.
If you are going to watch Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear then it is wise to know the sort of experience you will be coming to. The press release makes much of this being an experience you are unlikely to have had before, at that does hold true. While not a good film in the traditional sense, this celluloid passion project made out of love, really is quite unlike anything you would have seen before.
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