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Nicolas Cage could be the perfect pick for a daring horror film focused on Jesus Christ, though not for the motivations some audiences could guess. Truthfully, Cage does not actually play the central religious figure in The Carpenter’s Son: his role is referred to only as a craftsman. The actor is framed as the Joseph within this narrative, attempting to keep his religious convictions as the teenage character (played by Noah Jupe), their adolescent adopted son, begins to exhibit miraculous gifts. Why it’s difficult to picture a different prominent performer taking this character is that while the figure is weighed down with numerous challenges, Cage himself appears almost touchingly confident that the murky, bleak little movie is worth his time.

Cage's Current Career Choices

Cage was allocating that time more carefully recently. He yet makes additional projects than most casual fans may ever watch — for example, are you aware that he has filmed several separate Westerns recently? — however he also mixes in prestige independent films such as one recent hit, Pig, and Longlegs. This new film seems like in that category, as it’s genre-adjacent, likely to stir debate, and takes a campy-sounding concept with gravity.

Movie's Storyline and Direction

Sadly, writer-director Lotfy Nathan fails to repay viewer engagement. The film starts from a engagingly rootless place, presented as inspired by an obscure religious text about the early years of Jesus. Cage's character, The Mother, and their child move from place to place, fearful of doctrinal intolerance or suspicion over The Boy’s mysterious gifts. “Trouble pursues us,” The Carpenter mournfully notes. That continues when sinister entities target them at their new home, initiating on that well-known scriptural test for The Boy.

At times, the film echoes an Exorcist-style supernatural thriller, but not one of the main figures are clearly inhabited. On the contrary, they grow increasingly alienated from one another, as these forces influence a resident female (Isla Johnston, named “The Stranger”) that The Boy forms a relationship with, and provides everyone unsettling premonitions of a bleak destiny. The Carpenter notably fights with his place in the narrative, occasionally scolding his child who mystifies him.

Discussion and Care

The subject matter is apt to court controversy, and the director treats it with plenty of delicacy — too much, possibly. The idea of a adolescent confronted with his eventual sacrifice and tempted by dark influences is certainly terrifying, but Nathan might be cautious about appearing sensational and keen to telegraph his aims, therefore he regularly withdraws to gloomily threatening cinematography. The roles brood incessantly — the singer-actress, who displayed real promise in a recent film update, surprisingly — yields her performance to her Mother Mary cloak, sometimes broken up by several gruesome scary visuals.

The Star's Portrayal and Movie's Shortcomings

At the same time, Cage dabbles in exactly the kind of exaggerated performance that his more snickering appreciators could be expecting. One scene (also included) in the trailer in which Cage loses control and screams “My faith has been shattered!” Should such of dramatic explosion is a component of a Jesus-themed horror movie, perhaps a more boldly ridiculous method would make better use of Cage’s willingness to exaggerate if needed. Rather, the film echoes the weaker low-budget films he starred in through much of that period — excluding the campy action films instead the serious stories and paranormal movies that often seem intriguing, and often contain a few choice memorable scenes, but ultimately feel like, indeed, inexpensive direct-to-consumer content.

Frankly, several of these, though not as grand, were easier to view overall. At this point I have to violate my usual practice, not spiritual but professional: Years back, a respected mentor urged me to eliminate descriptive terms like “boring” or “dull” from my analytical lexicon. These words express scant except a subjective and generically described lack of patience, disengaging from the task of clearly expressing the thoughtful and sensation of viewing an individual production. It's challenging to express boredom without appearing dull yourself. It's equally vague as terming a movie “engaging.” “Elaborate,” essentially.

But I must confess, I grew weary during much of The Carpenter’s Son. On the positive side, it’s a devotional type of dullness, not because this movie is lecturing, but as it demands a type of dutiful submission to watch it. After a while soon after starting, this feature enters a cyclic tempo of simmering distress, and fails to