The Carpenter's Son Review: Theology, Biblical Accuracy, & Horror Storytelling
- Kevin Keating
- 2 days ago
- 11 min read
What would it have been like for Joseph to parent a teenage Jesus who is growing in awareness of his identity and power as the Son of God while also facing temptation from Satan? That’s the basic premise of The Carpenter’s Son, a horror film loosely inspired by the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, with Lofty Nathan directing and Nic Cage starring as Joseph, Noah Lupe as Jesus, FKA Twigs as Mary, and Isla Johnston as the Satan. Given the subject material and genre, The Carpenter’s Son will almost certainly draw polarized reactions. Below, I’ll unpack some of my priors and evaluate the film both from a theological/biblical and a horror-storytelling perspective. Also be sure to check out my interview with The Carpenter's Son writer and director, Lotfy Nathan, in which he responds to religious concerns about the film.
Why am I reviewing The Carpenter’s Son?
I suspect that many of the regular readers of this blog will have little to no interest in a film like The Carpenter’s Son, either because they have a general aversion to horror films or because they are skeptical of Bible-adjacent films not produced for or by theologically conservative Christians. You might even be wondering why I was willing to see the film and take time to review. So let me share a little bit about where I am coming from:
I don’t find horror to be an inherently problematic genre. That’s not to say that there aren’t problematic horror films that most Christians should avoid – there certainly are. But I don’t think horrifying stories are prohibited. When Paul encourages Christians to think about “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8, ESV), I don’t think he’s forbidding all dark, horrifying content. The Bible itself contains stories that force us to consider dark and horrifying things (e.g. Judges 19). Like the Bible, well-made horror films often speak to important truths about the human condition, the nature of good and evil, and the existence of providential justice. That being said, I don’t fault anyone who avoids horror due to personal aversion or conscience. As Paul says, “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5, ESV).
The horror in The Carpenter’s Son in particular doesn’t strike me as problematic. It’s mostly Satan possessing people and doing evil – something the Bible depicts as well. There’s no witchcraft, ouija, or other potentially tempting dark content.
I have enough confidence in my own theological and biblical grounding that I am willing to engage with works that may not align perfectly with my understanding of orthodoxy. Non-Christian and heterodox Christians can have true insights mixed in with falsehoods, for those who are established firmly enough in the biblical worldview to be able to judge the difference. That being said, as I’ll explain below, I wouldn’t recommend a film like The Carpenter’s Son to a young/immature Christian or someone with limited biblical knowledge or training.
I expect The Carpenter’s Son to draw a decent amount of interest from non-Christians. By engaging with it, I hope to amplify aspects of it that are indeed true and identify elements that are false.
One final note of caution: The Carpenter’s Son is Rated-R and contains dark, disturbing images (bodies in hell, crucifixion, lepers, demoniacs), graphic violence, and brief nudity. I’m used to dark imagery and violence from viewing other horror movies and the nudity is brief enough that it was easy to avoid watching, but viewers who are sensitive to such material should be wary.
Evaluating the Theology & Biblical Accuracy of The Carpenter’s Son
Recently, Hollywood takes on biblical stories have often gone off the rails theologically, and so I went into The Carpenter’s Son ready for a heavy dose of heresy and blasphemy. To my surprise, it was more theologically conservative than I expected, although it was not without elements that are theologically problematic or biblically inaccurate:
The film opens with title cards that describe the apocryphal gospels as writings that describe events from Jesus’ life left out of the standard timeline. While technically true, I think it may (incorrectly) suggest that the apocrypha are on an equal historical and theological footing as the canonical gospels. Even secular historians would acknowledge that the Infant Gospel is later than the canonical sources and was clearly not apostolic. It wasn’t “excluded” from the canon – it was never really in the running. To be fair, in our interview Lotfy Nathan acknowledged that he could see why the early Christians didn’t include the Infant Gospel in the cannon.
The Carpenter’s Son portrays Jesus as supernatural and the son of God but whether he proves to be sinless is debatable. Joseph, his father, regularly punishes Jesus for failure, although the movie invites us to question whether Joseph’s punishments are reasonable or a reflection of his stress, doubt, and need for control. Mary seems to take issue with Joseph’s treatment of Jesus and asserts that he is righteous and innocent. In practice, however, we see Jesus act in ways that many Christians would consider sinful, including watching a woman bathing nude, disobeying his father, and using his divine power to kill a teenage boy. Some of these moments are ambiguous (e.g. the boy Jesus kills was trying to alert a mob looking to kill the family) but I think most believers will find at least some moments troubling.
Believers with a particularly exalted view of Joseph may be troubled by his depiction. In The Carpenter’s Son, Joseph is struggling with doubt after years of struggling to care for Jesus. At one particularly low point, during an argument with Mary, he even goes so far as to question whether Jesus’ origin is from God or whether he is actually the offspring of some Roman soldier. He also takes a job carving a wooden idol. Joseph ultimately does pull through this season of doubt and comes to believe in Jesus as the Son of God, but I know some believers will be unwilling even to countenance such a struggle.
In the film, Jesus, as a teenager, is just coming into full awareness of his divine identity and powers. The way that this is handled is very reminiscent of a super hero origin story – Jesus suddenly hears the voices inside the heads of others, he accidentally bumps into a leper and heals him, etc. The Bible itself doesn’t address the manner in which Jesus’ human intellect relates to his divine intellect or how Jesus’ self-awareness developed and so the filmmakers are going out on a limb. I’m not sure this is house I would do it, but I think their approach is a defensible contextualization of mysterious and perhaps incomprehensible subject.
Historically, I’m not sure if the timeline for the film makes sense. Joseph is said to have brought the family to Nazareth after the death of Herod, which I think would have been much earlier in Jesus’ life.
Despite these issues, there’s actually a remarkable amount that the film gets right:
As I mentioned to Lotfy in our interview, I think there’s an interesting message in the film about idolatry. Joseph is portrayed as fashioning a wooden idol – an idol that Jesus eventually smashes. This seems to me to be symbolic of how Joseph is trying to control Jesus and fashion him into what he thinks he should be. Idolatry is, after all, about humans shaping God to fit their own understanding/expectations and trying to control him.
We see the birth of Jesus play out in a stable, following Luke 2. Joseph gets a vision from angels warning him to take the family to Egypt in order to avoid Herod’s slaughter of the innocents (Matthew 2). Although Joseph (years later) is shown to doubt his memory of his vision, these events are portrayed as objectively true.
Jesus has visions of his future, including his death on the cross and his resurrection in the Tomb. We’re more or less invited to take these visions at face value as true.
Satan is unambiguously a spiritual being that has fallen into evil and now has a place appointed for it in hell. The film portrays Satan as being driven by a sense of resentment that leads it to want to drag Jesus down to its level. Basically, its goal is to make Jesus hate/resent humanity and convince him to use his divine power to punish it. Generally, I found the film’s use of and characterization of Satan to be compatible with the Bible.
Jesus is shown to have innate power to remove evil spirits. Whenever he sets out to do so, he succeeds – demons aren’t able to resist him.
Mary, the character closest to Jesus and God, also reflects the most orthodox perspective. As I noted above, she asserts that he is innocent, righteous, and destined to be the savior.
Many apocryphal gospels are gnostic, so I was concerned gnosticism might infect the film’s outlook. There is a bit of gnostic thinking – but it comes from Satan, who claims it is trying to liberate humans from their flesh. I don’t think the film invites us to sympathize with Satan’s perspective here – we clearly see it as perverse. The film also never seems to suggest that God is evil or was wrong for creating matter, etc.
I think the film is also interested in the tension between 1st century Jewish focus on purity and Sabbath rules and Jesus’ compassion for the outcasts and suffering. Jesus is willing to go to leper colonies and visit the crucified because he cares for them and doesn’t want to see them treated as irredeemable outcasts.
If you’re a young/immature Christian who is still developing an understanding of the Bible, theology, and who Jesus was, I would urge caution about a film like The Carpenter’s Son misleading you into beliefs that the church has historically rejected. But if you’re a person with a fairly solid grasp on the Bible and Jesus, I think it’s possible to sift wheat from the chaff. There are some interesting ideas at play in the film that are worth engaging with, if you can do so without damaging your conscience.
Evaluating The Carpenter’s Son as a Horror Film
There are plenty of Bible movies that have good theology and follow the biblical texts fairly closely but are not well-made or engaging films. Conversely, it’s possible for a film to be quite engaging and well-made, even if it has horrible theology and departs from its source material in egregious ways. As a fan not just of Bible adaptations but also of horror films, I was interested to see how The Carpenter’s Son fared on both levels.
People go to horror for a variety of reasons. Some viewers are just looking for the jolt of adrenaline that comes from the jump scares and gross out moments you get in a slasher like Halloween. Other viewers gravitate toward the sense of looming dread and suspense that you get in slow burn horror films like Hereditary. Still others are looking primarily for relevant social commentary, like what you get in films like Get Out.
The Carpenter’s Son has a few gross moments (e.g. the horrifying tortures employed against Rome’s enemies) and cool jump scares but probably not enough to shock or satisfy the adrenaline junky horror fan. I also think it faces an intrinsic problem with respect to dread/tension. Because the film hews as closely to the biblical story as it does, it’s hard to be too worried about Satan as a threat. Jesus has the power to heal and to cast it out of people, so the only real danger Satan poses is moral corruption. But we know that Jesus isn’t going to fall – his visions seem to confirm that he is preordained to fulfill his biblical role as the Savior. I can imagine a version of The Carpenter’s Son that made it clear early on that all bets were off and that the film was willing to depart from the biblical story in much more radical ways. Although such a film would have been far more blasphemous and problematic from a Christian perspective, it would have preserved a greater sense of dread. That’s not to say that we don’t get any dread. There was enough to keep me in my seat, but not quite enough to make me feel like I was in the hands of a madman.
I think the sense of dread is also dampened because The Carpenter’s Son seems torn over what kind of movie it wants to be. Is this Jesus’ super hero origin story, in which he discovers his powers, undergoes suffering, and emerges with a more mature outlook? Or is this primarily Joseph’s story, in which he struggles with the responsibility of raising his unusual son in the face of a harsh world and a malevolent tempter? There’s a lot of potential dread in the Joseph story – all parents dread what might happen if their child ends up taking a bad path. But the Jesus origin story carries much less dread because, as I noted, we know where the story is heading – and we also know Jesus will never really be locked into a truly existential battle for survival. As a horror film, I think The Carpenter’s Son would have been served better by leaning more into Joseph’s perspective.
I suspect the tensions between these two possible versions of the film are related to issues I had with Joseph as a character. Early in the film, I found it easy to relate to Joseph as an imperfect but sincere father, pulled between providing for his family in a difficult circumstance and instilling his zealous faith in his son. As the film continues, however, Joseph becomes quite unpleasant in ways that are hard to sympathize with. It’s not that the main character of a horror film can’t become unpleasant – The Babadook pulls that off quite well. But we have to understand why a character is heading down a dark path. There are hints of this. But because we’re focused so much on Jesus’ storyline, the pressures that Joseph is under feel less real. If the film spent more time showing us the pressure Joseph is under, we would understand (even if we don’t approve) when he takes drastic actions like kicking Jesus out. I also think it’s unclear to me what Joseph is hoping to accomplish by kicking Jesus out. After dedicating his whole life to protecting this boy, what is he going to do, just return to being a normal carpenter?
I’m the kind of person who can enjoy a horror film primarily for the thematic questions that it raises, even if it isn’t quite as strong on scares or dread, and The Carpenter’s Son was more satisfying in that regard. As a father, Joseph’s struggle forced me to contemplate the ways in which my desire for control can become counterproductive and shatter the very family that I’m called to nurture. As a believer, Joseph’s struggle forced me to contemplate the ways in which I try to control and shape God/Jesus in my image – and how angry I can get when Jesus shatters these false idols of God. I was also interested by the film’s portrayal of Satan as a bitter reject who basically wants to drag everyone down to his level – a dark mirror of what Jesus could have become if he went down the wrong path – and perhaps also a reflection of the resentment and malice one sees online among disaffected incels and groypers. And I was obviously invested in seeing to what degree the film would depart from the biblical story. Indeed, I wonder if non-believing viewers might be less engaged because they won’t be quite as invested in such questions.
The Carpenter’s Son isn’t a top-tier horror film that’s going to rank among modern classics like The Babadook or Get Out. But it also isn’t opportunistic shlock that’s just hoping to exploit the shock value of its concept. The film raises some interesting thematic questions and employs its premise for a few unique shocks and moments of dread. But I suspect the film will suffer for being too edgy/heterodox to satisfy the religious audience and yet too faithful to the biblical source material to be able to keep horror fans on their toes. While Horror fans may want to give it a look, I doubt it will have a lasting influence or place within the genre.
Supporting The Bible Artist
Have my resources helped you explore and enjoy Bible films and shows? My resources are used by thousands of Christians like you, as well as church communities and ministries across the globe. You can help my work continue through a one-time gift or recurring support*.
*Members who contribute $5/monthly or $50/annually receive access to exclusive content, including monthly blogs and pdf versions of my Bible study/discussion guides, as well as free gifts and other perks.
