Popular reviews

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  Review by Justin Decloux ★★★★ 2

  "Like vibrating babes in the woods!"

  I hope you like home movies of people surfing!

  Forget your Breens and Wiseaus, this is the real shit. Pure uncut art that is as impenetrable as it is thunderous. New age philosophy thrown in a blender, auto-translated into Japanese, and half-remembered back into English by a long-haired surfer prophet (made of electricity and squids) that keeps slipping into a Patrick Stewart impersonation as his uncomfortable son looks on. Features the greatest single-take performance of the year. It will haunt my dreams.

  The fandom of this is going to be hilarious, and then quickly, exhaustingly annoying.

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  Review by Dan Gorman

  Now that's what I call a Surfer Teen Confronting Fear!!!!!!!!!!

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  Review by Evan “Kaizō Haya-shill” Pincus ★★½ 11

  A very large wave of insanity. S(t)ummer fun for... basically nobody? I'm surprised folks are calling this the next The Room, since with the exception of act 2 ("somebody get this kid a coke!"), this is basically arthouse cinema. Not good, mind you, but the theology lessons, oddball editing and overuse of home video give this a strong, totally inaccessible dreamdrone vibe. Act 3, a 25 minute surfing montage scored by Burke's own compositions, circular melodies that never resolve and piercing electric guitar trills... it's kinda the closest these "bad" movies get to genuinely transcendent outsider video art, and maybe one of the strangest things I've seen all year. Also at one point a character pronounces anonymous as "anymouse". It's great- it's Surfer© Teen Confronts Fear! Apparently the original cut of this was 6 and a half hours long and I need to know what was left on the cutting room floor- probably even more surfing footage.

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  Review by Paul Corupe ★½ 5

  Endless dumber

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  Review by Taylor Heider ★★★★ 3

  If there is one thing I can say with certainty, it's that I have never quite seen a movie like SURFER: TEEN CONFRONTS FEAR before. Which, if you know me in any capacity online, you will know that is a hard standard to meet for me. I mean, shit, the past month I've done nothing but binge-watch shot-on-video fetish tapes about belly buttons and Bill Zebub's born-against Christian movies, yet SURFER is the one that truly broke my mind.

  This was a mostly blind-watch, though recommend to me heavily by my friends, Luke and Evan, who were lucky enough to catch it in theaters. I have to say that going in not really knowing what is going to happen will…

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  Review by joakim dreams of peace ★★★★

  Night Visions Film Festival - Maximum Halloween 3019

  Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear

  Screening with the spirit of God

  "I'm trapped in an iron maiden of pain boooyh!"

  Why go to see a therapist about your trauma when you can hang out with your dead dad who lectures you about waves, the spirit world and God? Why watch masterpieces when you can sit down and experience endless surfing montages?

  Dear Letterboxd, forget Parasite: this is cinema.

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  Review by Sam P. ★★★

  “Get this boy a Coke.” - Banks

  Here’s a snapshot: The first third of SURFER© TEEN CONFRONTS FEAR is a nearly hourlong, biblically-rooted, single scene rhyming epic poem wherein the spirit of a boy’s dead dad comes back - as “squids and electricity” - to give him the courage (and, in a tertiary way, the money) to surf again. 🏄 🏄 🏄

  Utterly inscrutable outsider cinema that oscillates between extra-dry ultra-boredom and scream-shouted verbosity pronounced at the top of the writer-director-producer-composer-actor Douglas Burke’s lungs. Hyphens! A feature-length home movie with Oscar-level ambitions all of eleven years in the making playing at the Laemmle Music Hall in good ol' Beverly Hills five times per day through Thursday, Feb. 22nd. Not to be missed, but not necessarily to be rushed back to, either.

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  Review by Jason Coffman 5

  I just learned that Douglas Burke is touring a 35mm print(!!?!!?!?!) of the black and white version (!!!?!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!) of this movie, and I need everyone to write impassioned letters to any local independent cinemas that have access to 35mm projection begging them to book it. Because my GOD, if you've only seen the color digital version of Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear, have you really seen Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear?

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  Review by traci mcface ★★★★

  IM MADE OF SQUID AND ELECTRICITY.

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  Review by #1 Bratz Fan ★★★★

  The first hour is a little tough. All monologue and surfing footage. It feels like a therapy session for the director’s son. You know, with one of those therapists who literally never stops talking or lets you get a word in about your own problems, and occasionally throws up squid ink, or shouts in a British accent. I know that sounds great, but for an hour? It’s a bit much. The second half really picks up, with a lot more characters, and bizarre storytelling. I loved the stranger who tells the son it’s ok to kill people if you’re a good person, and of course, the father showing up again under much different circumstances. I also loved the end credits,…

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  Review by Andrew Todd ★★★½

  I'M IN AN IRON MAIDEN OF PAIN, BOY!

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  Review by SgtZima ★★★½

  90 minutes of a kid surfing, interrupted by scenes of the director spouting religious, new agey nonsense to his real-life son, who looks terrified. Most of the actors look like homeless people, and there’s a bizarre scene in a military mental hospital, which is clearly a community theatre stage.