Inside The Carpenter’s Son: What Nic Cage’s Biblical Horror Is Really About — And Why It’s Branded Blasphemous
Nicolas Cage’s The Carpenter’s Son plunges into Bible-adjacent horror as Lotfy Nathan follows Mary, Joseph, and a young Jesus — and the film is already igniting controversy in religious circles ahead of its release.
Of course Nicolas Cage would sign on for a horror movie about the early years of Jesus. The Carpenter's Son is creeping up on release and already poking the bear in certain religious circles. The twist: it is not a Sunday-school spin. It is a horror riff that pulls from a deep-cut, non-canonical text and the director's own background. If that sentence makes your eyebrow go up, you are the target audience.
What this movie actually is
Writer-director Lotfy Nathan sets the story in a remote village in Roman Egypt, where Mary, Joseph, and a young Jesus get pulled into full-on spiritual warfare. This version of Jesus is a kid in conflict, which leaves him open to temptation from Satan. Yes, Satan shows up in person, played by Isla Johnston, whispering in his ear to ditch his devout father's rules.
Why people are worked up
The film looks past the traditional Bible canon and mines the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a text a lot of Christians consider heretical. That text paints a complicated portrait of Jesus as a child — quick to anger, capable of things that do not line up neatly with divinity. Nathan is also drawing from his own Coptic Catholic upbringing, which gives the movie a very specific lens you do not usually see in mainstream Bible stories. Magnolia Pictures' materials frame it like this:
Writer and director Lotfy Nathan, drawing from his Coptic Christian background, delivers a meticulously crafted, genre-bending supernatural thriller packed with unshakeable images of the divine and demonic at war.
So no, it is not pretending to be a traditional Gospel adaptation. That is the point. Whether you find that bold or blasphemous probably depends on how you feel about apocrypha to begin with.
The marketing vs. the outrage
For what it is worth, the trailers are not dunking on Jesus. The emphasis so far has been on Joseph's faith as the weapon of choice against the evil circling this family. The noise about blasphemy feels louder than the actual footage warrants. Maybe pump the brakes until the thing actually comes out.
The Cage of it all
Cage headlining a biblical horror movie is not shocking if you have followed his career. He has a long history of swerving into the strange, and the recent horror run — Arcadian, Longlegs — has been reliably entertaining. Could The Carpenter's Son whiff? Always possible. But odds are good he will swing hard.
- Title: The Carpenter's Son
- Director/Writer: Lotfy Nathan
- Inspiration: Nathan's Coptic Catholic roots and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (a non-canonical text early church authorities called heretical)
- Setting: A remote village in Roman Egypt
- Premise: Mary, Joseph, and a conflicted young Jesus face spiritual warfare; Satan, played by Isla Johnston, tempts the child to reject his father's rules
- Tone/Genre: Supernatural horror with biblical elements
- Current read on the marketing: Focused on faith-as-armor, not cheap shots at Jesus
- Recent Cage context: Arcadian and Longlegs continue his horror streak
- US release date: November 14, 2025