CARPENTER’S SON, THE
(director/writer: Lotfy Nathan; cinematographer: Simon Beaufils; editors: Sophie Corra, Guillaume Fusil, Monika Willi; music: Lorenz Dangel; cast: Nicolas Cage (The Carpenter), Noah Jupe (The Boy), FKA Twigs (Mother), Isla Johnston (The Stranger, Satan), Souheila Yacoub (Lilith), Orestis
Paliadelia (Rabbi); Runtime: 94; MPAA Rating: R;
producers: Riccardo Maddalosso, Eugene Kotlyarenko, Julie Viez, Alex Hughes, Nicolas Cage; Magnolia Pictures; 2025-UK/France)
“A bummer in every which way.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The cobbled together biblical pic is about Jesus finding his way as a child to become himself. It’s a dull and messy film about keeping the faith.
It’s not scary despite using horror film trappings.
The Carpenter’s Son is seriously directed and written with the intent of humanizing a deity by the Egypt-born, London-raised filmmaker Lotfy Nathan (“Harka”/”12 O’Clock Boys”), a member of the Coptic Orthodox Church. It’s about the Son of God trying to convince himself and his doubting father that he’s the Messiah. The story is inspired by the heretical Infancy Gospel of Thomas, an alternate Christian text set in AD 15 from the Apocryphal Gospels, written by the early Christians. Its text is not accepted in the canon of scripture by most Christians because Jesus is seen as fallible.
The devout and dour carpenter Joseph (Nicolas Cage), the adopted father of the Boy (baby Jesus), and his doting mother by a divine birth Mary (FKA Twigs), escape King Herod’s mass murder baby burning bonfires in Bethlehem.
The next time we see Jesus is as a troubled teenager (Noah Jupe), living with his outcast nomadic family in a remote small village in Egypt, where the father earns a living as a carpenter making idols. Jesus is not sure if his powers of curing the sick are demonic or divine. He struggles with his faith, as he resists using his super powers for evil in his nightmares and envisions his crucifixion in a dream. He interacts with the Devil in his small town, who appears as the androgynous Stranger (Isla Johnston) tempting him to use his powers for Satan. Jesus also resists the sexual temptations of watching in lust his neighbor Lilith (Souheila Yacoub) bathe in the nude.
The scenic visuals are good (it was shot in Greece), but the story, the directing and the acting are stilted.
The unorthodox biblical film is weird and does not have a strong enough stand-alone story to be convincing about its way of looking at Jesus. I would rather sit through a preachy Sunday school sermon than watch such a misguided funky B-film that has so little to say about Jesus that registers and revolted me further because it stars the miscast scene-stealing Cage, who looks so out of place as if he wandered into the wrong film.
REVIEWED ON 11/24/2025 GRADE: C-
dennisschwartzreviews.com