“Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear” Entered Our Radar And We Can’t Stop Thinking About It.

Ever come across something totally new and strange, get all excited to share it with others, then learn that you’re late to the party and almost everyone already knows? So, rather than coming across all clever and cutting, you just look like an out-of-the-loop dork?

There’s a bit of that going on here at Stab. We all just learned about Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear and we can’t stop thinking about it.

The brainchild of Doug Burke, a USC professor, and starring his son, Sage Burke, a young charger and quarter finalist of the 2018 Pipe Pro Junior, Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear is a film that makes me scream, “Why the fuck isn’t this available online?”

Other than the trailer above, a slick website featuring text that looks suspiciously familiar, and evidence of a couple premieres that took place earlier this year, there’s little to be found. And that kills me, because I just have to see it.

Based on some online reviews, combined with my poorly recalled understanding of my half-hearted Christian upbringing, the plot of the film seems to be this:

After suffering a totally heinous wipeout the protagonist, Sage, isn’t digging the whole surf deal anymore. But he stills totally loves the ocean and so spends his days fishing off a local pier.

One day his line snags on something in the water, which turns out to be his father. Only, his father is dead! What the fuck?

Turns out God brought him back to life in order to make Sage start surfing again. In an interesting twist, God also made the dad out of electricity and jellyfish, I guess, and every moment of the guy’s existence is pure torture.

Except that the father is also still alive somehow, in a military facility after an attempt to murder a bunch of people went awry and left the dude all fucked up. You can see him flail about for a moment during the trailer. I can only assume that scene is part of the big reveal and is also the military intrigue referenced in said trailer.

With the help of his father, who isn’t actually dead, which makes whatever the fuck is hanging around with Sage probably some kind of demon, Sage learns to love surfing again.

There’s also a magic sea lion involved, somehow.

Screenwriter Simon Barrett had the following to say about the film: “I have mixed feelings about Surfer. On one hand, it is a fine film about surfing and receiving poetic life advice from the ghost of a semi-comatose covert assassin who has been temporarily resurrected as squid meat. On the other, it has no talking cat in it.”