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The acclaimed actor could be the perfect pick for a audacious horror film focused on the biblical figure, though not for the reasons certain fans could guess. Actually, the star does not actually act as Jesus in The Carpenter’s Son: his role is credited simply as The Carpenter. He is cast as a father figure in this story, attempting to uphold his religious convictions as the teenage character (acted by Noah Jupe), their teenage adopted son, commences to exhibit divine powers. The reason it's hard to picture another leading star in this role is that even as his character becomes weighed down with multiple trials, Cage himself looks nearly touchingly certain that this dark, bleak small film is a valuable project.

The Actor's Recent Projects

Nicolas Cage has using his time more judiciously recently. He still stars in more films than most casual fans will ever see — for instance, were you informed that the man has filmed three different cowboy movies over the last few years? — yet he also mixes in prestige critically acclaimed roles such as one recent hit, another notable movie, and Longlegs. The Carpenter’s Son appears to be a similar project, as it’s genre-adjacent, likely to stir debate, and takes a over-the-top premise with gravity.

The Film's Premise and Handling

Sadly, filmmaker the director does not justify that serious attention. The film begins with a engagingly rootless place, presented as drawing from an apocryphal lost gospel regarding the early years of Jesus. The Carpenter, the maternal figure, and their son move frequently, fearful of faith-based hostility or suspicion regarding The Boy’s strange powers. “Trouble pursues us,” Cage mournfully notes. That continues when dark forces attack the family at their new home, initiating with that familiar Biblical temptation for the son.

Occasionally, the film resembles an Exorcist-style supernatural thriller, but none of the main figures are directly possessed. Rather, they become more and more distant mutually, as these forces infect a nearby girl (the actress, named “The Stranger”) who the son forms a relationship with, and gives all unsettling premonitions of a bleak destiny. The Carpenter especially struggles with his position in the narrative, occasionally scolding his child he can’t fully understand.

Controversy and Care

This material is apt to court controversy, and the director handles it with a lot of sensitivity — too much, possibly. The concept of a teenage boy dealing with his destined offering and seduced by unknown powers is indeed frightening, but the filmmaker may be cautious about seeming gratuitous and eager to telegraph his intentions, therefore he regularly falls back on dimly foreboding cinematography. The figures continually reflect — FKA Twigs, who demonstrated genuine potential in another movie, surprisingly — yields her performance to her religious attire, sometimes broken up by several gnarly horror imagery.

Cage's Portrayal and Film's Weaknesses

At the same time, Cage toy with precisely the type of exaggerated performance that his ironic fans could be expecting. One scene (featured) in previews where he erupts and yells “I’ve lost my faith!” When this sort of dramatic explosion is part of your religious scary film, perhaps a more openly absurd approach would be more effective of the actor's readiness to exaggerate when necessary. Instead, The Carpenter’s Son echoes the less successful direct-to-video movies the actor filmed during the 2010s — apart from the B-movies but rather the dramas and paranormal movies that typically appear interesting, and often contain a few choice memorable scenes, but ultimately feel like, frankly, inexpensive direct-to-consumer content.

Frankly, some of those, though not as grand, were easier to view in general. This is when I have to break my usual practice, not religious but work-oriented: Years back, a respected mentor urged me to banish words like “monotonous” or “lifeless” from my film-criticism vocabulary. Such terms communicate minimal but a subjective and generically described lack of patience, withdrawing from the duty of clearly expressing the intellectual and emotional experience of watching an individual production. It's hard to convey tedium without sounding boring personally. It's equally vague as labeling a movie “engaging.” “Elaborate,” essentially.

But I must confess, I grew weary during much of the film. On the positive side, it’s a religious style of boredom, not due to The Carpenter’s Son is moralizing, but since it takes a kind of patient acceptance to view it. After a while early on, the movie enters a repetitive rhythm of simmering anguish, and fails to