Divinity, Blasphemy and Fighting Satan: How Nicolas Cage Channeled an ‘Existential Crisis’ in Teen Jesus Horror Movie ‘The Carpenter’s Son’

The logline for “The Carpenter’s Son” might be high-concept — Mary and Joseph try to protect a teen Jesus, whose burgeoning miracles seem like witchcraft to the community around him — but Nicolas Cage, who plays Joseph, says he had a very specific read on the Biblical horror movie.

“I have always been drawn to movies about family, beginning with ‘East of Eden’ and ‘Ordinary People,’ and in my own work, I’ve tried to gravitate towards family dramas in particular. I couldn’t think of a more compelling family dynamic than the nativity itself,” he says. “Particularly as it pertains to Joseph, as parents, we’re all under immense pressure to protect and guide and to keep healthy and keep safe our children. But imagine Joseph, who has been called to protect and guide that which is divine, that which is the son of God, and the pressure he’s under to deliver the divine child to his mission is that times billions. If anything goes wrong or he fails or makes a mistake, he feels it’s on him. So he’s having an existential crisis and begins to contend with doubts and forces, both human and spiritual, that want to derail the mission.”

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“The Carpenter’s Son,” in theaters Nov. 14 via Magnolia Pictures, is the creation of writer and director Lotfy Nathan, who says he was inspired by a lesser-known set of stories from Jesus’ childhood that are often called heretical.

“I’m always on the hunt for what could be a good film,” Nathan says. “My dad, who’s very into religious history, introduced me to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. He had this old copy of the apocryphal gospel and pitched that to me as an idea, and I just thought it was incredible. It was one of those rare lightning bolt ideas where you can see the whole thing right away. Plus, if you squint your eyes at it, it’s sort of an origin story, which was exciting to me to do something like that. I really didn’t plan to do a religious film or a film about Christianity, nor did I plan to make a horror story out of it, but I think that was part of my reading of the Infancy Gospel.”

The biggest twist on the source material was Nathan’s decision to include a form-shifting antagonist who is well-known for Biblical shenanigans.

“Satan is not in the apocryphal gospels that I was referencing, and my earlier drafts didn’t have that element to it,” Nathan says. “But it was an evolution in trying to tell this origin story. This narrative could fill in some missing pieces of the story of Christ while still fitting neatly and sequentially in what could have happened. It occurred to me that Jesus, as a child, may have had his first encounter with Satan. I started to look at the New Testament, asking those questions. They could have met before, and I was allured by the idea that they could have some familiarity at that point, later on in his life.”

Noah Jupe, who portrays Jesus in the film, was intrigued by portraying him at a different age than audiences are used to.

“At the beginning of this film, Jesus does not know that he’s Jesus,” Jupe says. “He does not know what’s going to happen to him. He does not know the impact he’ll have on this world. Bringing the innocence of that, that sort of naïveté, to unfold throughout the story… I didn’t necessarily want to look at anything later than the birth of Christ, because that all happens after this story. I wanted to be present in this moment in his life and the coming of age of Jesus, exploring that.”

FKA Twigs’ twist on her character, the stoic Mother Mary, was to evoke her strength through her presence and body language.

“Something that Lotfy and I spoke about a lot was to not mistake Mary’s grace with weakness,” Twigs says. “Even the way that she stood was something we worked on, the way she held her hands, the way she would look or nod her head was something we spoke about from the very beginning. I really wanted to charge Mary with a lot of authority, but the way that authority would come across would be that she’d be able to look, and Jesus would know to stop. She would be able to give a look to Joseph and he would know he’s gone too far. By building that arc, by the time she did have an explosive scene, it felt very warranted.”

Despite the unconventional story, Jupe says he didn’t take lightly the opportunity to play one of the most well-known figures of all time.

“As a lover of stories, when I was presented with this opportunity to sort of explore a section of one of the greatest stories, fictional or not, ever told, and that has impacted millions and millions of people, it was extremely exciting and daunting,” he says.