“The Carpenter’s Son” (2025) claims to adapt “Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” an apocryphal gospel, i.e. not the official Bible, about Jesus’ childhood, but it feels more like a starting point. Starting with the birth of a child before fast forwarding fifteen years, The Carpenter (Nicholas Cage) is showing the psychological strain of protecting The Mother (FKA twigs) and The Boy (Noah Jupe), but when The Stranger (an androgynous Isla Johnston) figures out The Boy’s identity, The Stranger decides to reveal the truth about The Boy’s identity. Egyptian Christian writer and director Lofty Nathan promises horror but made a movie that is a boring and trite reimagining of a classic story without being provocative or even mildly interesting. I love horror, and I love Jesus, so this movie was a particularly cruel waste of time.
I generally hate when movies name characters after nouns instead of names so from now on The Carpenter equals Joseph, The Mother equals Mary, The Boy equals Jesus and The Stranger is Satan, which the Cage and Jupe pronounce with a strange emphasis on the syllables that feels like a build up to something exciting, but is not. Cage is restrained for him and plays Joseph like a discount, disapproving, resentful Pa Kent. He gave it his all in “The Surfer” (2025). After fifteen years, the sanctimonious, kill joy Joseph is looking for another hit of holy light and hearing the voice of God. It is shot more like aliens visiting Joseph than God or angels, which would have been a subversive and fun idea that Ridley Scott would have applauded, but alas no. Basically Joseph is a killjoy, self-righteous dad who cannot stand his son, but is a complete hypocrite because he carves idols to make a living. Also if he wants the kid to fast, maybe do not suggest after offering him dinner. Cage has played fathers before, and giving Jesus an awful stepdad could be a great idea to see if nature or nurture would take over, but nope. Joseph gets redeemed at the eleventh hour in this toothless “The Carpenter’s Son.”
Jupe plays an actor who plays Hamlet in the upcoming critically acclaimed “Hamnet” (2025). In that film, his acting limitations are transcended with the truthfulness of the emotion and how it sits with the audience. He won’t have his character’s luck in “The Carpenter’s Son.” The material is so bad that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to rise above it. He cannot, but he tries. His agent should have tried harder. There are some oneiric sequences that seem promising but ultimately go nowhere. I know that this Jesus is supposed to be a misunderstood, persecuted, confused teenager but those qualities should not be conflated with dumb. He keeps hanging out with Satan even though they are clearly bad news. Satan is not being subtle and may as well wave a flag saying, “I’m evil and want to hurt you.” They walk around with a wooden snake and is clearly killing people left, right and center.
Johnston may be the best thing about “The Carpenter’s Son” even in such a ridiculous role. She is so clearly seething and aggrieved in every scene while bringing a dangerous seductive, supernatural quality to every line read. If Jesus is attracted, it is to the sense of familiarity and supernatural otherness, which speaks to his otherworldly origins. Johnston embodies rage over her character following certain rules and still being ignored or not preferred: telling the truth, revealing Jesus’ powers, etc. Satan looks different depending on the beholder. Joseph sees The Old Fiend (Elena Topalidou), who is distinct for moving like a zombie or a possessed person. This movie is so boringly lacking in subtlety that exorcisms involve reaching into someone’s mouth and yanking out an enormous snake whose head resembles a snail. This trick has been done in movies before. It is not scary. Just tired.
How is Twigs? Again the material is devastatingly bad, and she is annoying in it. She mostly seems high and stunned. When Mary kept sending Joseph off to fetch Jesus, I kept thinking, “You want the abusive father to get your son. Are your legs broken?” The character is underdeveloped. She is supposed to be a woman of unshakeable faith, but now that the internet has exposed boy moms, there needs to be more than sticking up for your son when the entire village accuses him of wrongdoing or just experiencing his pain vicariously. There is a scene where a couple of village women welcome her by placing a cloth on her head, and she thanks them. Um, what? No Black woman in the history of humanity has ever thanked anyone for touching her head without permission. The older woman then remarks that her kid does not look like her, which is a dog whistle to any mother of a biracial baby, but again it goes nowhere. Side note: reserving some saltiness for the implication that Jesus is biracial as if God is a white man, but it feels useless considering the legion of quality issues. Not signing a waiver, but conserving energy.
Again, the idea that a village would be alarmed, not delighted, to have a supernatural figure in their midst should have been a slow burn development that culminated at the end. Nope, from jump, they are staring at him like he jumped up to make an announcement at a wedding. Instead, it is like an unsatisfying side dish like mac and cheese from someone who has no business making it and decided to throw green peas into the mix. There are crucifixions, but no Romans, and they are mostly used for blasphemers, not people who revolt against Empire. There is one cool scene where Jesus is standing among the tortured people as if he is the maniacal king of the sorcerers, but it is concept that gets toyed with then dropped as quickly as it starts. “The Carpenter’s Son” is unable to focus on any concept for too long.
Watching “The Carpenter’s Son” is like watching only the bad parts of “Man of Steel” (2013). There is a scene where Jesus and Satan roll around the mud and fight, which sounds better than the execution. I cannot stress enough how anticlimactic it is. I do not care how many blood red skies and naked writhing bodies in a pit that you give me, stick the landing with one concept. Nathan needed to watch “Brightburn” (2019), a flawed movie, but a scandalous credible concept then put that stank on the Jesus story or just tell it straight without remixing the apocryphal text. In the end, Nathan just does not have what it takes to commit to a story where Jesus could be mixed up with Damien from “The Omen” (1976) then pull back. Hell, watch any version of “Firestarter.” Literally anything else. Nathan could have elaborated on the theme of hurting living creatures to test his powers.
The closest that “The Carpenter’s Son” gets to being provocative is having Jesus recreate a David and Bathsheba moment, and even that concept has been done and dusted before. It was only provocative then to people who had never been exposed to that concept in its original form in the Secret Gospel of Mark. French royalty was particularly invested in being related to Jesus so it was less about human, horny Jesus, but being a blue blood and a literal divine right of kings. There is nothing new under the sun. A teenage boy is sexually attracted to the girl next door. Again it goes nowhere except writhing bodies, bubbling skin poking out from the clothes like exposed breasts and the aforementioned monstrous snake inside of her screams of sex as the real scare. If it is body horror, it is so tame it is as if David Cronenberg never existed. When Satan is not being homicidal, occasionally Satan is seductive, and combined with that androgyny, there is a fear of queerness. Again these moments seem thrown into the mix like someone who has not gone to the supermarket, peeled all the labels off canned goods and decided it would be fun to make a mystery meal. For who? Not hard-core horror fans promised blasphemy and get reheated, stale, moldy leftovers.
If you want a blasphemous Jesus, may I recommend “Suspiria” (2018) instead of “The Carpenter’s Son.” This movie does not even fall into the territory of its so bad its good. A real horror Jesus movie should shock and feel spiritually transcendent like a solid slice of cosmic horror. Instead this dull dishrag of a film makes a solid argument to stick to the classics, which may have been overdone, but at least resonates with many Instead this movie offers an early anno domini equivalent of the Maury Povich show. Turns out Jesus is not the Carpenter’s son after all.
