Film Review: The Carpenter's Son 木匠的兒子 (2025) - USA / France
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 5/10
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A Bewildering Descent from Ambition to Ambiguity - Lotfy Nathan’s “The Carpenter’s Son arrives with the heavy, portentous air of a storm cloud promising biblical fury. It dares to reimagine the adolescence of Jesus Christ – here, simply "The Boy" (Noah Jupe) – not as a time of quiet carpentry and burgeoning wisdom, but as a visceral, terrifying crucible of burgeoning, uncontrollable divine power within a fragile human vessel. It’s a premise crackling with potential for profound horror and theological unease. Potential, sadly, is the operative word. What unfolds on screen is an intriguing, visually arresting, yet ultimately frustrating descent into narrative quicksand, where ambition drowns in execution.
Visually, Nathan crafts a compelling world.** Eschewing the polished marble of typical biblical epics, he grounds his tale in the gritty, sun-baked soil of Roman-era Egypt (convincingly rendered in rural Greece). It’s a world of dust, sweat, and palpable oppression, captured with a stark, earthy beauty that lends itself perfectly to the film’s darker aspirations. Within this setting, Noah Jupe delivers a performance of remarkable focus and vulnerability. He embodies the sheer, terrifying confusion of a teenager discovering powers beyond comprehension, wrestling not just with destiny, but with the monstrous implications of his own potential. Isla Johnston, as the serpent-tongued Stranger (Satan), slithers into the film with a captivating, dangerous energy, injecting much-needed complexity and spark whenever she appears. When the film leans into its body horror elements – manifestations of divine wrath or demonic influence twisting flesh – it offers chilling glimpses of the truly audacious film it could*have been.
Alas, these strengths are undermined by fundamental flaws. The film’s greatest sin is its pacing. Clocking in at a seemingly lean 94 minutes, it paradoxically feels interminable. Long stretches meander, heavy with portent but devoid of genuine tension or narrative propulsion. Nathan struggles mightily to reconcile the intimate, human drama of Joseph (a curiously restrained Nicolas Cage), Mary (a criminally underused FKA Twigs), and their struggling family, with the operatic supernatural horror the premise demands. The result isn't synthesis, but a jarring disjointedness. The tone lurches uncertainly between grim family tragedy and grotesque horror, never finding a stable, compelling rhythm. Characters, beyond Jupe’s Boy and Johnston’s Stranger, feel frustratingly thin. Mary is reduced to a near-sil, anxious cipher, her potential as a core emotional anchor squandered. Cage’s Joseph flickers only occasionally with the actor’s trademark intensity, offering moments of unintentional levity in an otherwise suffocatingly solemn affair, but mostly remains a muted, bewildered bystander.
So, what are we left with? “The Carpenter’s Son” is an experiment, undoubtedly. It possesses arresting imagery, a bold concept, and two central performances that hint at greatness. But experiments can fail. This one founders on its own indecision. It’s too slow, ponderous, and self-serious to satisfy horror fans seeking visceral thrills. Its bleak, unconventional take on sacred narrative is likely too grim and ambiguous for traditional faith-based audiences seeking affirmation. It gestures towards deep mythological exploration – the terrifying burden of divinity, the seductive pull of darkness – but pulls its punches, retreating into murky symbolism and unresolved tension. It aims for the profound depths of horror like “The Exorcist”or “St. Maud” but lands in a bewildering middle ground, neither a piercing theological inquiry nor a consistently gripping genre exercise.
Lotfy Nathan swings for the heavens with “The Carpenter’s Son”, aiming to carve a new testament in biblical horror. Instead, the chisel slips. While the ambition and visual craft earn respect, the film is ultimately undone by a fatal lack of focus, glacial pacing, and a narrative uncertainty that leaves its provocative premise frustratingly unexplored. It’s a near miss that feels like a missed opportunity, a journey embarked upon with conviction but without a clear map home. The result is less revelation, more cinematic purgatory. (Neo, 2025)