Nicolas Cage is very much in the experimental independent film stage of his career and his latest movie is as wild as ever.
The Oscar-winner stars as Joseph (more old surfer hippie dude than 1st century step-father to the Son of God) opposite FKA Twigs’ Virgin Mary in the new supernatural thriller, The Carpenter’s Son.
Opening with the newlyweds smuggling Jesus out of Bethlehem as King Herod’s men burn a newborn baby alive, it was clear this ambitious film wasn’t going to hold back.
The focus of its strange tale is the Flight to Egypt, when the Holy Family are hiding in exile from the Massacre of the Innocents.
However, writer-director Lofty Nathan has departed from the traditional gospel narratives, which New Testament scholars date within the disciples’ lifetime.
Instead, the cradle Coptic Orthodox Christian has loosely based his script on the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, penned in the mid-late 2nd century and considered inauthentic and heretical by the Early Church. The latter document’s existence isn’t too surprising, given the gaps in Christ’s biography in the Gospels, although Luke includes an account of him at the Jerusalem Temple at the age of 12. The Carpenter’s Son, however, takes full artistic license by extending the Egyptian exile to 15AD (at least over a decade after the Holy Family is recorded as having returned in the Bible).
The story follows Noah Jupe’s teenage Jesus – complete with Gen Z broccoli haircut – having something of a superhero origin story. Unlike the Christ of Scripture’s omniscient understanding of who He is, the film version’s awareness of being God incarnate only comes with puberty. Accidentally touching a leper, the diseased man is cured and calls the boy divine, as the young Messiah has prophetic visions of his blood-soaked crucifixion for the sins of the world and shroud-covered resurrection. Such sequences, plus the beautifully captured Greek landscape doubling for Egypt, are gorgeously photographed by cinematographer Simon Beaufils.
As for the supernatural horror, Isla Johnston plays a scarred-up Devil, tempting Jesus in his proto-Wilderness, as Cage does what Cage does best: his Joseph rages as he’s haunted by doubts about the boy’s divinity. Contorting demons, snakes pulled out of the mouths of the crucified and circles of Hell are just some of the disturbing imagery in this bizarre fable. Nevertheless, it was refreshing that the depictions of such horrors are much closer to the Biblical descriptions of Satanic evil than the Disney-style sanitisation that’s much more common in even the most faithful gospel adaptations.
THE CARPENTER’S SON is in UK & Irish cinemas from November 21 and on Digital from December 22. Own it on DVD and Blu-ray from February 23, 2026.
