The Bible doesn’t lack for sweepingly cinematic moments, ranging from the standard (war, romance, murder, betrayal) to the nutty (two she-bears tearing 42 kids apart for mocking a bald guy; a talking donkey). If that’s what’s going on in the accepted canon of the church, the content of the apocrypha has got to be wild, right? Well, if The Carpenter’s Son, based on the heretical coming-of-age text the Infancy Gospel Of Thomas, is any indication, stories of Jesus Christ’s childhood can get pretty out there—but they can also be adapted into a shockingly boring genre film. It takes dedication to make a dull movie where Nicolas Cage plays Joseph and Jesus gets into a fistfight with Satan, but The Carpenter’s Son sets to its task with devotion, if little else.

The third film from writer-director Lotfy Nathan (12 O’Clock Boys), The Carpenter’s Son effectively observes the first temptation of Christ: How and when will the son of god (Noah Jupe) use his divine powers? If he followed the teachings of his parents—his strict, chaste taskmaster father (Cage) and deeply miscast mother (FKA Twigs)—the answer would be “never.” Their family has been laying low since the boy’s birth, moving from town to town, trying to avoid unwanted earthly or otherworldly attention as they raise the messiah. They don’t mention the boy’s future, which they’ve received vague visions of, but merely keep him at a distance from the world, hoping that this will prevent pagans, villains, and temptresses from getting their paws on him.

Despite this familiar structure—that of restrictive parents sheltering a rebellious teen—The Carpenter’s Son is caught between genres and tones. Filled with the horror-adjacent gunk and gore of Biblical suffering, the infected wounds and bloody torture of the period, the film also frames a few lethargic scares using scabby lepers and hands reaching from the darkness. Peasants growl, babies burn on bonfires. All of it is, at minimum, pretty silly. But this isn’t even a horror film per se. Despite some ridiculous contortionists and lurching Satanic zombies, The Carpenter’s Son creates no suspense as Jupe’s savior begins exploring his Sith-like powers. Rather, Nathan—the lack of structure from his documentary work doing his fiction no favors—keeps retreating back to the film’s more bland dramatic elements: The parents debating how to raise their son; their family continuing to stay under the villagers’ radar.

This muddles everything, especially the performances. Jupe gets stuck playing a naïve boy (surreptitiously ogling a woman as she bathes) and an all-powerful force (yanking a CG snake from the throat of a cursed woman), depending on the scene. His confidence and skill zag up and down like a volatile market, or like the vocal gymnastics of one of Cage’s less interesting freak-outs. Cage sobs and screams with the same intonation as any of his direct-to-video revenge-seekers, while Twigs relies solely on her beautifully dead-eyed, model-like stare. These stiff turns reflect roles with little definition and nowhere to go. The most compelling performance comes from an androgynous young villager (Isla Johnston), who, despite a few editing tricks and an obviously malevolent disposition, isn’t exactly a threatening vessel for evil.

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This villager serves as the main lure for the carpenter’s son, literally whispering in his ear to separate him from his family’s ideals and lure him to the dark side of the force. Her arguments are as vacant as his parents’, but as Jupe figures out he can glower a literal death stare at village boys, or bring grasshoppers back to life, the person acknowledging his powers is more appealing than the people trying to pretend they don’t exist. This shallow temptation is as obvious and oppressive as the hypersensitive sound design and gray-brown mush of a color palette. Even its brief visions of Hell are tedious: The muddy, squirmy mess of effects look less like a pit of eternal suffering and more like a syntax error.

The Carpenter’s Son grapples with Jesus coming into his own without the bloody masochism of Mel Gibson, the contemplative complexity of Martin Scorsese, or the gaudy sheen of the worshipful bargain-bin epics. Rather, like the gospel on which it’s based, The Carpenter’s Son is doomed to be buried and forgotten, despite including some truly bizarre depictions of a religious icon. Again, Jesus socks Satan right in the mug, and that’s not nothing.

Director: Lotfy Nathan
Writer: Lotfy Nathan
Starring: Nicolas Cage, FKA Twigs, Noah Jupe, Souheila Yacoub
Release Date: November 14, 2025