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Nicolas Cage may be the perfect pick for a audacious scary movie focused on the biblical figure, but not for the reasons many viewers might assume. Actually, Cage doesn't even play the central religious figure in The Carpenter’s Son: his role is credited only as a craftsman. He is positioned as the Joseph of this narrative, attempting to keep his beliefs while The Boy (portrayed by the young actor), their adolescent foster child, commences to exhibit supernatural abilities. The explanation it's hard to envision any other prominent performer playing this part is that even as his character is stricken with various challenges, the actor looks practically touchingly certain that the dark, grim little movie is a valuable project.

The Actor's Latest Film Selections

Nicolas Cage has allocating his time more judiciously lately. He continues to does additional projects than the majority of average viewers will ever see — for example, did you know that he has made several separate frontier films over the last few years? — however he also adds esteemed independent films like one recent hit, another notable movie, and Longlegs. This new film sounds like in that category, in that it’s genre-adjacent, possibly controversial, and takes a campy-sounding premise in a earnest manner.

Movie's Storyline and Direction

Unfortunately, filmmaker Lotfy Nathan does not justify the audience's focus. The film begins with a compellingly nomadic setting, positioned as based on an unknown scripture about the early years of Jesus. The Carpenter, the maternal figure, and their child travel from place to place, fearful of doctrinal intolerance or suspicion about The Boy’s strange powers. “Disaster trails us,” The Carpenter gloomily remarks. It goes on as sinister entities focus on them in their latest settlement, initiating on that traditional religious challenge for the youth.

Occasionally, the film echoes an demonic possession-type horror film, except that not one of the lead characters are directly possessed. Instead, they are progressively isolated from each other, when these entities infect a local young woman (Isla Johnston, named an outsider) that The Boy connects to, and provides each character disturbing images of a grim future. Cage's role in particular fights with his place in this story, occasionally scolding the boy he doesn't completely grasp.

Controversy and Care

This material is prone to invite debate, and Nathan treats it with a lot of delicacy — too much, perhaps. The notion of a adolescent confronted with his eventual sacrifice and tempted by dark influences is truly frightening, but the filmmaker might be wary of looking exploitative and anxious to indicate his intentions, so he often falls back on darkly ominous filming. The figures constantly ponder — the singer-actress, who showed genuine potential in the 2024 Crow remake, surprisingly — cedes her role to her religious attire, at times punctuated by several gruesome scary visuals.

Cage's Acting and Movie's Flaws

Meanwhile, Cage dabbles in just the sort of overacting that his more snickering appreciators could be expecting. There is a moment (featured) in the trailer in which he flips out and shouts “My belief is broken!” Should such of dramatic explosion is a component of your Jesus-themed horror movie, possibly a more boldly ridiculous style would be more effective of his eagerness to exaggerate as required. Instead, the film echoes the weaker straight-to-DVD productions Cage made over the 2010s — not the cheesy thrillers but rather the dramas and ghost stories that typically appear interesting, and usually have some select actor's highlights, but in the end seem like, frankly, inexpensive direct-to-consumer content.

Frankly, some of those, though not as grand, were easier to view as a whole. Here is where I need to disregard my personal rule, not religious but work-oriented: Previously, a respected mentor convinced me to banish adjectives like “boring” or “dull” from my film-criticism vocabulary. These words communicate minimal other than a individual and broadly stated restlessness, withdrawing from the job of vibrantly communicating the thoughtful and emotional experience of seeing an individual production. It's hard to convey tedium without seeming uninteresting oneself. It's just as unclear as terming a movie “engaging.” “Explain further,” that is.

But I must confess, I felt uninterested during much of the film. To the movie’s non-exploitative credit, it’s a churchy kind of stultification, not for The Carpenter’s Son is preachy, but as it demands a kind of obedient endurance to sit through it. Eventually soon after starting, the movie settles into a cyclic tempo of simmering distress, and does not