🔗 Share this article

Nicolas Cage is likely the perfect pick for a audacious horror film centered on the biblical figure, though not for the reasons some viewers could guess. In reality, the star does not actually play Jesus in the new film: his role is referred to only as The Carpenter. The actor is cast as a father figure of this story, working to uphold his beliefs while the teenage character (portrayed by Noah Jupe), their adolescent foster child, starts to show supernatural abilities. The reason it's hard to envision a different prominent performer taking this character is that although his character grows stricken with various trials, Cage himself seems nearly moving certain that the dark, bleak feature is deserving of his effort.

The Actor's Latest Career Choices

Nicolas Cage was allocating those years more selectively in recent years. He continues to does more movies than the majority of regular audiences could possibly view — for example, are you aware that he has filmed a trio of distinct frontier films in the past three years? — however he also includes esteemed A24/Neon gigs such as one recent hit, Pig, and a further title. This new film sounds like one of those, because it’s genre-adjacent, possibly controversial, and takes a over-the-top concept with gravity.

The Film's Storyline and Execution

Unfortunately, filmmaker the director does not justify the audience's focus. The Carpenter’s Son starts from a engagingly rootless context, positioned as based on an unknown scripture regarding the youthful days of the messiah. Cage's character, the maternal figure, and their child travel frequently, fearful of religious persecution or doubt about The Boy’s mysterious gifts. “Trouble pursues us,” The Carpenter mournfully notes. This persists as sinister entities attack the household in their latest settlement, initiating on the well-known scriptural test for The Boy.

Sometimes, this production mirrors an demonic possession-type supernatural thriller, but none of the main figures are directly possessed. Rather, they become increasingly alienated from each other, while these forces infect a resident female (the actress, named “The Stranger”) that the son forms a relationship with, and presents each character unsettling premonitions of a bleak destiny. The Carpenter notably fights with his role in this story, occasionally berating the son he doesn't completely grasp.

Controversy and Caution

The content is prone to stir disagreement, and the director approaches it with a lot of delicacy — too much, maybe. The idea of a young man confronted with his eventual sacrifice and tempted by dark influences is truly terrifying, but the filmmaker may be wary of seeming gratuitous and keen to telegraph his intentions, therefore he regularly falls back on dimly foreboding filming. Characters constantly ponder — the singer-actress, who demonstrated notable talent in a recent film update, surprisingly — yields her acting to her Mother Mary cloak, occasionally interrupted by several disturbing frightening scenes.

Cage's Portrayal and Movie's Shortcomings

Meanwhile, the actor dabbles in exactly the kind of overacting that those who enjoy his campier roles could be expecting. There is a moment (shown) in previews in which he loses control and yells “My belief is broken!” If that kind of dramatic explosion is part of a Jesus-themed horror movie, perhaps a more boldly ridiculous approach would be more effective of Cage’s willingness to go over the top as required. Instead, the film more closely resembles the poorer straight-to-DVD movies he starred in over the 2010s — not the cheesy thrillers but rather the dramas and paranormal movies that often seem intriguing, and frequently include a few choice Cage moments, but finally come across like, frankly, inexpensive direct-to-consumer content.

Honestly, some of those, although simpler, were more watchable as a whole. Here is where I have to violate my usual practice, not religious but career-related: Long ago, a beloved editor urged me to banish adjectives like “boring” or “dull” from my film-criticism vocabulary. These phrases communicate minimal but a subjective and vaguely expressed lack of patience, disengaging from the job of vividly conveying the intellectual and emotional experience of seeing a particular movie. It’s difficult to express monotony without sounding boring personally. It's equally vague as calling a movie “engaging.” “Explain further,” that is.

However, I admit, I was bored during much of the film. On the positive side, it’s a religious style of dullness, not due to this movie is moralizing, but because it demands a kind of patient acceptance to sit through it. After a while soon after starting, the film settles into a repetitive rhythm of ongoing suffering, and never really