The Bible doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s what\u2019s going on in the accepted canon of the church, the content of the apocrypha has got to be wild, right? Well, if The Carpenter\u2019s Son, based on the heretical coming-of-age text the Infancy Gospel Of Thomas, is any indication, stories of Jesus Christ\u2019s childhood can get pretty out there\u2014but 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\u2019s Son sets to its task with devotion, if little else.<\/p>\n
The third film from writer-director Lotfy Nathan (12 O\u2019Clock Boys<\/a>), The Carpenter\u2019s 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\u2014his strict, chaste taskmaster father (Cage) and deeply miscast mother (FKA Twigs)\u2014the answer would be \u201cnever.\u201d Their family has been laying low since the boy\u2019s birth, moving from town to town, trying to avoid unwanted earthly or otherworldly attention as they raise the messiah. They don\u2019t mention the boy\u2019s future, which they\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n Despite this familiar structure\u2014that of restrictive parents sheltering a rebellious teen\u2014The Carpenter\u2019s 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\u2019t even a horror film per se. Despite some ridiculous contortionists and lurching Satanic zombies, The Carpenter\u2019s Son creates no suspense as Jupe\u2019s savior begins exploring his Sith-like powers. Rather, Nathan\u2014the lack of structure from his documentary work doing his fiction no favors\u2014keeps retreating back to the film\u2019s more bland dramatic elements: The parents debating how to raise their son; their family continuing to stay under the villagers\u2019 radar.<\/p>\n This muddles everything, especially the performances. Jupe gets stuck playing a na\u00efve 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\u2019s 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\u2019t exactly a threatening vessel for evil.<\/p>\n Aussies torment a well-balanced Nicolas Cage in The Surfer<\/a>Nicolas Cage brings some strangeness to the otherwise cheap, generic Gunslingers<\/a><\/p>\n This villager serves as the main lure for the carpenter\u2019s son, literally whispering in his ear to separate him from his family\u2019s ideals and lure him to the dark side of the force. Her arguments are as vacant as his parents\u2019, 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n