A faith-based film that works better as a religious-horror as opposed to a sincere story about a teenage Jesus, The Carpenter’s Son nevertheless delivers as a dark and grim movie about the corruptive power of evil and the burden of shepherding good through a fallen world.
Directed and written by Lofty Nathan (Harka) The Carpenter’s Son takes its inspiration from “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas”, a long dismissed yet nevertheless fascinating fictional account of Jesus Christ’s time as an adolescent. With the films’ genre exploits and flexible theology, The Carpenter’s Son is more comparable to religious-horror-fantasy thrills of The Prophecy than the Biblical artistry of The Passion of the Christ and could very well become a cult-film.
The Carpenter’s Son stars Nicolas Cage as The Carpenter (aka Joseph) who along with The Mother (aka Mary, play by FKA Twigs) protect their teenage son The Boy (aka Jesus, played by Noah Jupe) from a dangerous world. As The Boy begins to openly explore his divine nature, he draws the attention of The Stranger (aka Satan, played by Isla Johnston) who attempts to seduce an impressionable teenage Jesus to the dark side.
Nathan – who is a Coptic Christian – has delivered something akin to a “First Temptation of Christ” complete with charges of sacrilege and even blasphemy from Christian apologists due to the depiction of an adolescent Jesus as rebellious and troublesome.
While such objections are reasonable from a strictly religious standpoint, The Carpenter’s Son should be viewed as nothing more than a solid religious-horror genre movie and a well crafted one at that.
Nathan has a great eye for the visual, evoking religious symbology to startling effect during sequences both fascinating and horrific. Scenes where Jesus is haunted by nightmare visions of his eventual death upon the cross and subsequent resurrection is both powerful and frightening.
Noah Jupe delivers solid work as a young Jesus trying his best to adhere to the Old Covenant while struggling with his need to establish the New. Even better is Isla Johnston as a female depiction of Satan, her piercing stare and direct contempt for God’s creation part and parcel of a frightening depiction of evil manifest.
Not faring so well is FKA Twigs who delivers a near comatose performance that lacks any sense of maternity. Nicolas Cage, meanwhile, is stuck in a desperate state of despair that is all howling grimace and insufferable anger at both his wayward “son” and his Creator.
The biggest criticism of The Carpenter’s Son, though, is Nathan’s inability to bring some light into this most grim of faith-based horror. Even The Passion of the Christ had moments of reprieve from the suffering.
There is much to like in The Carpenter’s Son: an ominous religious-horror that takes its themes seriously, yet some hope amongst the horror would have resulted in a better movie.
