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Nicolas Cage could be the ideal choice for a daring horror film centered on the biblical figure, though not for the reasons some audiences might assume. In reality, Cage does not even play Jesus in the new film: his character is credited simply as The Carpenter. He is positioned as the Joseph within this story, working to maintain his beliefs while the teenage character (acted by the young actor), his teenage adopted son, starts to display divine powers. The reason it’s difficult to picture any other leading star playing this part is that although his character is stricken with various difficulties, Cage himself looks almost emotionally confident that this gloomy, somber little movie is worth his time.

Cage's Latest Projects

Cage was using those years more judiciously recently. He still makes more movies than most casual fans will ever see — for example, did you know that the man has filmed a trio of different Westerns over the last few years? — but he also mixes in prestige independent films such as one recent hit, another notable movie, and Longlegs. The Carpenter’s Son appears to be in that category, because it’s borderline horror, potentially provocative, and takes a campy-sounding description quite seriously.

Movie's Storyline and Direction

Unfortunately, writer-director Lotfy Nathan fails to repay viewer engagement. The film starts from a engagingly rootless setting, marketed as based on an apocryphal lost gospel concerning the early years of Jesus. Cage's character, The Mother, and the boy travel constantly, anxious of religious persecution or suspicion over The Boy’s strange powers. “Trouble pursues us,” The Carpenter mournfully notes. It goes on when dark forces attack the family at their new home, beginning on that well-known scriptural test for the youth.

Occasionally, the movie resembles an demonic possession-type horror film, except that none of the central roles are directly possessed. On the contrary, they grow more and more distant mutually, while these forces infect a local young woman (the actress, credited as “The Stranger”) that The Boy connects to, and gives everyone unsettling premonitions of a bleak destiny. The Carpenter in particular fights with his role within the plot, occasionally chastising his child he can’t fully understand.

Debate and Sensitivity

The content is likely to court controversy, and Nathan approaches it with a lot of delicacy — excessive, maybe. The idea of a young man confronted with his future martyrdom and seduced by dark influences is certainly terrifying, but Nathan might be cautious about looking exploitative and anxious to signal his goals, thus he frequently retreats into darkly ominous cinematography. Characters brood incessantly — FKA Twigs, who demonstrated notable talent in a recent film update, of all things — yields her performance to her Mother Mary cloak, sometimes broken up by several gruesome scary visuals.

The Star's Portrayal and Movie's Shortcomings

Meanwhile, the actor toy with exactly the kind of overacting that those who enjoy his campier roles might be looking for. An instance (featured) in previews where he erupts and yells “I’ve lost my faith!” Should such of dramatic explosion is a component of a religious scary film, perhaps a more boldly ridiculous method would make better use of his eagerness to be extreme as required. Instead, the film echoes the poorer direct-to-video productions he starred in through much of the 2010s — apart from the B-movies instead the dramas and ghost stories that typically appear interesting, and frequently include a few choice memorable scenes, but ultimately feel like, frankly, cheap home video fare.

Honestly, a number of those, while less ambitious, were more watchable in general. At this point I need to break my usual practice, not spiritual but career-related: Previously, an admired senior urged me to remove words like “boring” or “dull” from my film-criticism vocabulary. These phrases communicate minimal other than a individual and vaguely expressed impatience, avoiding the task of vibrantly communicating the mental and emotional experience of viewing an individual production. It's challenging to communicate tedium without sounding boring oneself. It's equally vague as terming a movie “engaging.” “Elaborate,” that is.

However, I admit, I grew weary during much of the film. To the movie’s non-exploitative credit, it is a devotional type of boredom, not due to The Carpenter’s Son is preachy, but because it demands a sort of obedient endurance to sit through it. Eventually in the beginning, the film enters a cyclic tempo of simmering distress, and does not