A Catholic review of The Carpenter's Son

CINEMA MEETS NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: ‘The Carpenter’s Son’ Reimagines the Boyhood of Christ — Badly. COMMENTARY: Marketed as a ‘horror movie,’ the film leans on fringe apocryphal tales but ends up revealing more about modern storytelling than ancient faith (Deacon Thomas L. McDonald, National Catholic Register).

Naturally, the faithful will wonder if a self-described “Jesus horror movie” — a movie in which a moping, teenaged Jesus fights a nonbinary Satan (pronouns: they/legion) while Cage’s Joseph struggles with his faith and pop star FKA Twigs pouts vapidly as the Blessed Mother — is heretical, blasphemous or any number of other appalling things, but it’s simply too mindless and incoherent to be genuinely offensive.

It’s a grimy, meandering and pointless exercise that can’t quite decide if it wants to be a genuine exploration of faith or an exploitative thriller, and thus winds up being nothing at all.

That's harsh, but not untypical of the reactions to the film.

This review gives a good overview of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and its limited influence on the movie. It's refreshing to find a reviewer who made the effort to read and read up on the book.

I was looking forward to a cinematic version of the Infancy Gospel, which, as the review observes, has no shortage of horror material. I'm disappointed to hear how thin the apocryphal veneer actually is.

Background here and links.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.