By
Steve A. Wiggins
Religion and horror have been close companions ever since Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) showed that their relationship could be brought out into the open. Horror movies that feature Jesus directly are somewhat rare. The 2001 parody Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (Lee Demarbre) really doesn’t count. A low-budget comedy-horror, Demarbre’s film attempts no theological statements, just laughs. It has been suggested a time or two that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) could be considered a horror film. It certainly goes for the torture porn aesthetic, and it does have some passing similarities with The Carpenter’s Son (Lotfy Nathan, 2025). The two movies take different texts, however.
Check out the trailer for The Carpenter’s Son:
The Bible appears in many different ways in horror. One of the ways that this can be done without inciting a mob with flaming torches, is to choose a different, but related source. In this vein, the apocryphal gospels have proven productive. Stigmata (Rupert Wainwright, 1999), set in the present day, took as its text the Gospel of Thomas. The Carpenter’s Son, set in (mostly) 15 A.D., begins with this note:
“The apocryphal gospels are writings by early Christians.
“They describe events missing in the timeline of the New Testament.
“Based on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.”
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is not the same as the Gospel of Thomas. The latter is an early “sayings gospel”—it consists of sayings attributed to Jesus—and many scholars consider it nearly, if not equally, authentic with the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Gospel of Thomas was discovered in 1945 with a cache of Coptic texts near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is something quite different. It has been known since at least the Middle Ages, and was likely written in the mid-to-late second century of the Common Era. It is the “missing story” of Jesus’ childhood. It has never been considered authentic by scholars. It contains a number of childhood miracles of Jesus, some of which make it into The Carpenter’s Son. The movie is more than a retelling of Jesus’ tender years, though. It is also an exploration of the origin of evil.
I should explain that with one exception The Carpenter’s Son does not use the characters’ names. Using the carpenter, the mother, and the boy every single time would get a bit tedious here, so I’m putting in the more familiar character identities as well.
Nicolas Cage as ‘The Carpenter’
The film is serious in tone whereas the Infancy Gospel of Thomas has an almost lighthearted feel to it at points. The movie begins with Jesus’ birth and Joseph’s awareness that the child is special. Since Herod is killing baby boys, Joseph (Nicolas Cage) leads them away—traditionally this is called the “flight to Egypt.” In the movie, however, it is the setting for making Jesus (only at the very end called Yeshua (Joshua, the Hebrew form of Jesus) an outcast. The story skips ahead to Jesus at fifteen. The Infancy starts his miracles at the age of five.
Joseph finds work and settles his family in an unnamed village. Joseph’s job involves carving an idol of the Egyptian god Bes. He is a very pious man, constantly trying to get “the boy” to follow the law. Mary tries to get Joseph to be a bit more lenient, but her husband is conflicted. He knows the boy isn’t his child, but he begins to doubt the message that he is God’s son. The boy is interested in the neighbor girl, and he has powers but Joseph isn’t sure if they’re from above or below.
FKA twigs as ‘Mother’
Satan has been following them. Presented as a girl about the same age as Jesus, Satan knows who he is, but he doesn’t recognize her. She tries to get him to follow her—picking up the temptation scenes from the biblical gospels—and when she shoves him onto a leper, instead of catching the disease, the leper is healed. The girl next door (Lilith) whom the boy noticed becomes demon possessed. The villagers torture and crucify those they suspect of sorcery or conjuring, and that now includes Lilith. Jesus heals her and sends her away. Meanwhile, Satan continues to attempt to engage the boy in discussion. She reveals that Joseph is not his father. She kills the lepers and in general is disgusted by the way people treat each other.
The boy confronts Joseph about who his father is. “He is the cause of all things,” Joseph tells him. “Yahweh.” The villagers somewhat predictably turn on Jesus, and Joseph attempts to get them away. Satan has again engaged the boy in conversation, saying she knows his father, but has been shunned by him. The boy asks who she is. “The accuser of light. I am the adversary,” she answers. Showing the boy the entrance to Hell, she says it is a place of purity and order, unlike this world. The boy refuses to go and when Joseph shows up, Satan tempts the boy to kill him and when he won’t, she impales Joseph with a stick. Jesus and Satan fight and just as he’s about to gouge out her eyes, the dying Joseph stops him. “You must teach it that you will not bring God’s strength to bear for evil,” Joseph instructs. “You must forgive it.”
Reconciling with Satan, the boy prepares to go. “We are the same,” Satan tells him. Joseph dies, and rather heavy-handedly, is given a halo. This does, however, nicely parallel the glowing cross that appears in the shaded hovel just after the boy is born. The movie ends as Jesus leaves with his mother.
On the religion side of things, there will be plenty for scholars of religion and horror to discuss here. The Carpenter’s Son doesn’t fully commit to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, nor does it ignore the canonical gospels. Traditional believers will find much to be up in arms about, but the film does attempt to portray what a miraculous child might have struggled with as puberty hits and he has to begin his own moral reckoning of the world. Some of Infancy’s miracles are shown—resurrecting dead or inanimate creatures, and striking a boy dead. In The Carpenter’s Son he does it when the boy runs off to show the angry mob where he is. Still, it’s murder.
In the biblical gospels Joseph never appears after Jesus reaches twelve. This is also the cut-off point for the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The movie gives its own answer for what happened to Joseph, and leaves us with two-thirds of the holy family intact.
The Carpenter’s Son tries to be accurate to its time period with the clothing and living conditions of the people. It makes a few gaffes—Jews didn’t crucify conjurers or sorcerers, for example; children in general didn’t go to school; and Joseph’s piety would be unusual for the average head of household, and is more akin to that of a rabbi—but it maintains a feel for antiquity. Does it work as a horror movie?
For The Carpenter’s Son to be scary you need to buy into the story of the Devil. Demon possession has, of course, been done to death in horror. Young Jesus expels demons by pulling horned vipers out of the mouths of the possessed. This is a horror for many, I suspect. The snakes are much larger than the indigenous Cerastes genus but they are used symbolically throughout the movie. Lilith, when possessed, bites a chunk off her mother’s face. People are crucified. Some body horror is on display. Overall it’s unlikely to cause many nightmares. The one element that’s unmistakably horror is the soundtrack: creepy tones predominate.
While there are arguments with which to quibble, clearly this is a thoughtful film for which a fair amount of research was conducted. Satan does indeed translate as “adversary,” and Satan’s role in the Bible is that of accuser. The choice of Satan figure almost works—the problem of making “it” a girl does offer possible temptations for a young Jesus, but it also could be seen as misogynic. The dialogue comes across as sincere, Joseph and his divine step-son try to reconcile as each struggles with doubt.
The sympathetic treatment of Satan—a being who feels shunned by God and whom Joseph suggests Jesus forgive—isn’t entirely new but it will fuel discussions among the religion and horror crowd, I suspect, for some time to come. While not likely to become “must see” horror, The Carpenter’s Son will at least lend some conversation points to the debate on the origin of evil.
Steve A. Wiggins is an independent scholar who has taught at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Carroll College, and Rutgers and Montclair State Universities. He is the author of a book about possession movies, Nightmares with the Bible (Lexington, 2020) and the recently published Devil’s Advocates series book at Liverpool University Press on The Wicker Man. Check out his website. Steve has also written for Horror Homeroom on “Ecumenical Exorcism in The Unborn,” “What To Do When the Exorcist is Absent,” “The Golem as the Perfect Monster,” sex and death in The Lighthouse and The Witch, the found-footage film, Borderlands, “Reclaiming Jewish Monsters in The Offering,” and “Exorcising the Pope’s Exorcist.”
