The psychological horror movie The Carpenter’s Son features a fascinating perspective about The Carpenter (Nicolas Cage), The Mother (FKA Twigs), and their young son The Boy (Noah Jupe) targeted by supernatural forces in Egypt. I don’t believe their names were ever spoken in the film, but there’s no beating around the bush here; this is a horror adaptation of Saint Joseph, Mary, and their son Jesus.
Some will watch The Carpenter’s Son and see it as a visually arresting genre-fied piece of biblical fanfiction. Others will see the film as sacrilege (some already do). I just saw a horror movie without enough ideas or tension to be truly disturbing. I have my religious background, but going into this movie objectively, this is an interesting idea. A horror movie about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is risky, and the result is a movie that I found to be very peculiar. There’s something so strange about watching these famed religious figures from thousands of years ago sharing the screen with actors making guttural noises straight out of a late 20th/early 21st century horror movie.
Sometimes, you watch a movie and you just wonder who it was made for. My best guess is that The Carpenter’s Son was made for people who like horror movies. I like horror movies, and I don’t think the film managed to hook me from a scare standpoint. But for those who are steadfast in their religious beliefs, the idea of making a horror movie using these figures is offensive to them. Now, what about atheists who believe the Bible is fictional anyway? I don’t see them liking this movie either. Early on, Jesus is sleepwalking and having dreams/visions of people being crucified, which feels like a strange bit of on-the-nose foreshadowing for his own eventual fate. But also, are we really getting another movie where Jesus, widely believed to be a Middle Eastern Jewish man, is white?
With the number of toes The Carpenter’s Son steps on, this is genuinely a surprising, odd little movie. It doesn’t feel like writer/director Lotfy Nathan is aiming to be a provocative filmmaker. I never got the impression that he was aiming to make anyone angry with this film. It feels like he had an idea to take Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and make a horror movie surrounding these real figures. It’s a bold idea, and I can applaud his ambition, but making a classic genre horror movie with conventional scares is always a risk when you’re portraying real people. Lord knows we never needed multiple horror films about the murder of Sharon Tate, but we do.
And now, you have actors playing Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. You have scenes where Jesus is learning that he has the power to heal others with his touch (perhaps the best scene in the film is when he performs his miracle on a grasshopper). It’s all strange, especially when we’re watching “body horror” scenes within this movie. There’s something so off about the juxtaposition of the filmmaking with the subject matter that just never made sense to me.
Beyond all of that, the pacing can be a little slow. Strange, horrifying things are happening, and you’re waiting for a concrete threat to arrive. It takes a while, and in the meantime, you’re watching people suffer at the hands of these horrific acts of violence. The Carpenter’s Son revels in the disturbing imagery of people strung up in chains and crosses, brutally bloodied and beaten. While many horror movies thrive when leaning into disturbing ideas, you can get to a point where you’re watching this and you’re just not enjoying yourself anymore.
How are the performances? Well, Nicolas Cage has always been an enigmatic performer. People like to joke about the moments in his roles where he screams. He even took a shot at himself on SNL once, where he mentions that all his dialogue is either whispered or screamed. That kind of applies to this role, but he really is an incredible performer who can emote a lot with his eyes and sell many emotions. His performance as Joseph requires that, and he delivers. Jupe gives a good performance as Jesus, not playing him as the Christ figure many are familiar with, but as a young man learning about himself.
FKA Twigs is the weakest link in this cast. She has the least experience in acting compared to her co-stars, and you can tell. She’s very wooden for the majority of the movie. It’s a contrast to Cage, because her facial expressions don’t communicate much. There’s only one scene where she gets to really show emotion, but beyond that, there isn’t much to her performance.
By the end of The Carpenter’s Son, everything feels a bit vague. We do learn who the ultimate antagonist is (three guesses who), but it just doesn’t add up to anything more than a few pieces of disturbing imagery, so it’s not a movie that I can recommend to devout religious people, loud-and-proud infidels, or even fans of good horror.
SCORE: 3/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 3 equates to “Bad.” Due to significant issues, this media feels like a chore to take in.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our The Carpenter’s Son review.
