SURFER: TEEN CONFRONTS FEAR

Is this new movie the next The Room? It may be, according to Vice writer Grant Pardee. He calls Surfer “a fascinatingly absurd drama about a boy who must rediscover the courage to surf again with the help of the ghost of his father.” Writer-director-producer-composer Douglas Burke, PhD (who teaches physics at USC and lived in Cleveland’s Little Italy for a time) plays the film’s ghost dad (who’s made of squid ink, by the way), and Burke’s real-life son Sage is the fearful teen. Surfer is also a Christian movie, full of Bible stories. Discover it and become one of its first disciples! Remember that Tommy Wiseau’s The Room also premiered in Cleveland at the Cinematheque (in 2009). “As with Tommy Wiseau’s midnight movie favorite, Surfer is a self-funded indie filled with non-sequiturs, passionate performances, unexplained diversions, and bizarre dream logic. And like The Room, describing Surfer doesn’t do the movie justice; it’s a film that needs to be seen.” –Vice. Cleveland premiere. DCP. 98 min.