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Nicolas Cage may be the perfect selection for a daring horror film about Jesus Christ, though not for the reasons certain audiences might assume. Truthfully, Cage does not actually play Jesus in The Carpenter’s Son: his character is listed simply as a craftsman. He is cast as a father figure within this narrative, striving to keep his faith as his son (acted by Noah Jupe), his teenage adopted son, begins to show supernatural abilities. The reason it's hard to imagine another major actor playing this part is that while the figure is burdened with various difficulties, Cage himself appears almost moving confident that this gloomy, bleak feature is a valuable project.

The Actor's Latest Career Choices

Cage was allocating that time more judiciously in recent years. He yet does more films than most regular audiences will ever see — for example, did you know that the actor has made a trio of separate Westerns in the past three years? — however he also adds high-profile critically acclaimed roles such as one recent hit, another notable movie, and Longlegs. The Carpenter’s Son appears to be in that category, in that it’s genre-adjacent, possibly controversial, and approaches a over-the-top premise with gravity.

The Film's Premise and Direction

Sadly, writer-director Lotfy Nathan fails to repay viewer engagement. The Carpenter’s Son opens in a engagingly rootless setting, marketed as drawing from an unknown scripture concerning the early years of Jesus. The Carpenter, the maternal figure, and their son move constantly, afraid of religious persecution or suspicion regarding their son's unusual abilities. “Calamity follows us,” Cage gloomily remarks. It goes on as sinister entities focus on the family in their latest settlement, beginning on that well-known scriptural test for The Boy.

At times, the film mirrors an demonic possession-type possession movie, but none of the lead characters are directly possessed. On the contrary, they become more and more distant from one another, when these forces influence a nearby girl (Isla Johnston, named “The Stranger”) that the son bonds with, and presents all disturbing images of a grim future. Cage's role notably fights with his position within the plot, sometimes scolding the boy he doesn't completely grasp.

Discussion and Sensitivity

The content is prone to court controversy, and Nathan approaches it with much care — too much, possibly. The concept of a adolescent facing his eventual sacrifice and tempted by dark influences is indeed terrifying, but Nathan could be hesitant regarding appearing sensational and eager to telegraph his intentions, so he often falls back on gloomily threatening cinematography. Characters brood incessantly — FKA Twigs, who showed genuine potential in another movie, of all things — cedes her role to her character's costume, occasionally interrupted by several gruesome scary visuals.

Cage's Acting and Film's Shortcomings

At the same time, Cage dabbles in just the sort of overacting that his more snickering appreciators may desire. One scene (featured) in the trailer in which Cage erupts and shouts “I’ve lost my faith!” If that kind of dramatic explosion is included in your Jesus-themed horror movie, perhaps a more openly absurd style would make better use of Cage’s willingness to be extreme when necessary. Rather, the film more closely resembles the poorer direct-to-video productions Cage made over that period — apart from the B-movies so much as the dramas and paranormal movies that often seem intriguing, and usually have a few choice Cage moments, but finally come across like, indeed, low-budget DTV material.

Frankly, several of these, though not as grand, were more watchable as a whole. This is when I have to violate my own dogma, not spiritual but career-related: Previously, a respected mentor urged me to eliminate descriptive terms like “boring” or “dull” from my film-criticism vocabulary. Such terms express scant other than a individual and generically described impatience, withdrawing from the task of vibrantly communicating the intellectual and sensation of seeing an individual production. It's hard to communicate tedium without appearing dull personally. It's equally vague as labeling a movie “engaging.” “Explain further,” essentially.

However, I admit, I was bored throughout The Carpenter’s Son. To the movie’s non-exploitative credit, it is a religious style of boredom, not due to this movie is lecturing, but as it demands a sort of dutiful submission to view it. At some point in the beginning, this feature settles into a monotonous pattern of ongoing suffering, and does not