The Carpenter's Son (2025)

If you know me well you'll know I tend to value creativity more than fidelity and perhaps even more than narrative coherence. That's a good thing when it comes to Lotfy Nathan's The Carpenter's Son, a new horror-ish take on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas with a smattering of the Gospel of Matthew thrown in for good measure.

In a year when a slew of fairly stolid, conservative adaptations have hit screens big and small, it's great to finally have something that attempts to do something new and interesting. Indeed not only is this "Jesus-film" not based on the biblical gospels, it's not even particularly faithful to that, opting instead to use the strangeness of the stories in that Gospel as a mood board for it's exploration of the relationship between Jesus and his adopted human father Joseph, here played by Nicholas Cage.

I must admit I'm not generally a huge fan of Cage, but here he gives a great portrayal of a man frazzled by wrestling with his doubts and his demons, and quite a few other demons into the bargain. A few Jesus films in the past have looked more closely at the relationship between Mary and Jesus, including films where Mary is the central character, rather than her son, such as Mater Dei (1950) and Mary the Mother of Jesus (1999). One or two even take a closer look at Joseph, notably Jesus (1999) and Joseph of Nazareth (2000) and Jesus (1999). The latter of those even looks at Joseph and his son's relationship after Jesus has reached adulthood, though it's only a relatively brief part of the show's 3-hour runtime.

Here Nathan makes this the film's primary theme. The film starts with Cage leading Mary (played by FKA Twigs) out of Bethlehem as Herod's soldiers fulfil their orders to kill all the village's infants. This is frequently a horrific scene, but here there's a particularly shocking grimness to how this is filmed. Is it weird that I get a kick out of a subtitle saying "Anno Domini" at the start of the film? It took me a while to realise that this was the date. There's famously no year zero. Often nativity films use 4BC or 6BCE. Here it just goes with the year of our Lord, correct regardless of when, precisely, you date it.

Anyway we soon jump to fifteen years later with the Holy Family still skulking round, attempting to escape detection, and finding a new village where they will attempt, yet again, to re-settle. Joseph is also seeking to educate his son (played by Noah Jupe) about the ways of the world and of the spiritual battle he is involved in. Meanwhile, his son (because only one of the characters is actually named) is starting to become aware of malevolent spiritual forces, as well as his own powers, all while having to negotiate puberty. 

I think what Carpenter's Son really gets is the typically unremarked-on stress that Joseph must have undergone. Here it pushes things further. Not only does Joseph face the usual parental anxieties and the challenges of living in close proximity to those whose empathy has not yet fully developed, but he's also trying to protect him from Satan, his own powers, and the effect those powers might have on their new neighbours. Not to mention that fact that it appears he never 100% bought in to Mary's son not having a human father, such that it pops up when he's under-strain and wondering if he made the right choices. And all the while Satan is starting to step up their efforts to bring Jesus over to their side of things.

Actually very few of the incidents from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas appear in the film. The book mainly consists of Jesus experimenting with his powers, potentially getting in to trouble for using them, but then using them to get himself out of trouble as well, not entirely unlike a incarnated William Brown. A couple of the miracles bear a certain resemblance to those in IGoF.

While the film is not a conventional horror, most of the genre's characteristics feature here as well, albeit in a way that redefines them somewhat. Perhaps this is why it's currently only got a 3.9 on the IMDb at the moment. There were only a handful in at the screening I was at and this in the only cinema showing it in Leicestershire. Also, the special effects are pretty decent given the likely low budget (for such a film, with such a niche audience) and Lorenz Dangel's unnerving soundtrack is unconvnetional, a little off-kilter and generally first-class.

This won't be for everyone. In many ways it's a modern-day update of The Last Temptation of Christ (2004). This is a genuine attempt to wrestle with some of the big practical questions that surround Jesus's self-realisation of who he was, his susceptibility to female sexuality and the impact on him and those he loves. It's not without its flaws, and most will question the image of Jesus you come away with, but it's also novel, innovative and, for horror fans, quite a lot of fun.