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The Carpenter’s Son

The Carpenter’s Son

Last updated on: November 15, 2025 at 2:34 pm by James F. McGrath

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The Carpenter’s Son 2025-11-15T14:34:32-05:00 James F. McGrath

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The movie The Carpenter’s Son is the childhood of Jesus reenvisioned as a horror movie. It takes some inspiration from the apocryphal text known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Although the opening sequence of the film mentions apocryphal extracanonical texts, the movie bears no close relationship to that or other ancient texts in terms of its contents.

However, I can understand the connection between the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and horror. One time when I taught a course that introduces students to that text, one student compared Jesus in the text to Chucky. The Carpenter’s Son, however, is much more squarely in the horror genre. I have said more than once that I cannot consider myself a fan of that genre, yet I appreciate it nonetheless, not least thanks to academic friends who make the case for its importance and its distinctive insights in relation to religion.

There is always the professional hazard that someone like me will get caught up in the relationship of the film either to historical information or to literary source material. For me, the same point I make about the Infancy Gospel of Thomas applies to this movie that was loosely inspired by it. It is important to imagine Jesus’ childhood. It has always been possible to imagine a divine man, even if the concept is not without tensions. It is only when you imagine Jesus’ childhood, from infancy through adolescence, that it becomes clear whether you think of him as essentially a human being who is inspired/indwelt/possessed by God, a demigod, or a deity in human disguise. Finding out which is the case in The Carpenter’s Son is part of what makes it worth watching, to see what it does with young Jesus and to wrestle with how that relates to your own ideas. Of course, what you imagine is probably not the stuff of horror, and so this is bound to be different.

Jesus’ Family in The Carpenter’s Son

From this point on, I’ll discuss some of the details, and so if you’re inclined to remain spoiler free, this is where you’ll want to stop reading.

The movie is literally dark, with a lot of nighttime activity. It is full of decaying corpses, festering wounds, angry shouting, demon-possessed people as per the Exorcist, and demons in serpentine form emerging from the mouths of the possessed. There are a wide array of varieties of horror, and not everyone finds all of them equally appealing.

Quite a bit of the horror relates quite closely to things that are horrific and horrifying in the source material, not only extracanonical texts but also the Gospels. The film begins with the intense pain of Mary’s labor, soon followed by the massacre of the infants, in which infants are tossed onto a blazing pyre. There is demon possession, which in Jesus’ time was not about people walking like zombies and behaving in bizarre ways so much as about disease. Yet people lived with the perception that they were surrounded by malevolent spiritual entities that would seize any opportunity to do them harm, just as they lived under the oppression of human authorities. This too was a horrifying aspect of human existence as the Gospels depict it. To this can be added the horror of doubt when one has discovered that their wife is pregnant, and the only reassurance is a dream you had, now some time ago. When the film jumps ahead to the adolescence of Jesus, the once reassured Joseph is wracked with doubt. Jesus also has terrifying sleepwalking nightmares of being crucified, and then of being shrouded in a tomb and suddenly coming back to life.

Joseph is stern with Jesus, constantly telling him to pray, and himself fasting and praying, including asking God where Jesus is from, whether angels or demons. Mary asks him at one point why Joseph offers him only punishment, to which he replies that he takes no joy in punishing him, but that is how he must learn. I would add that this behavior also reflects Joseph’s doubts about Jesus’ origin, both in terms of not being his own child and doubts about Mary, but also in terms of the possibility that Jesus is a miraculous conception but not from a divine source. Joseph describes his faith as a “broken crutch.”

Satan and Demons in The Carpenter’s Son

Satan appears as a character in the film, and although this is only made explicit towards the end, we already guess that that is who this character is from very early on. Satan takes the form of a child who lives among the sick.

At one point, Satan pushes him onto a leper. The man later finds Jesus, saying that he healed him., adding “You are divine. Touch me.”

Jesus crushes a locust in his palm without fully intending to, and then restores it to life.

Satan says to Jesus, “To do things in secret is the greatest pleasure.” Satan shows Jesus crucifixions and other punishments, saying that the victims are accused of sorcery. Jesus tells the tempter, “I can feel their pain…and yours.” This touches on one of the things that the film does well. We get a sense that this malevolent figure we are dealing with has a story, a personality, and is not merely a cardboard cutout villain.

One character is a woman named Lilith who is demon possessed. She convulses, and bites someone. Later, Jesus confronts the demon in Lilith, now chained among the sorcerers. Jesus reaches into Lilith’s mouth and pulls out the demon in the form of a snake. He sets her free not only spiritually, but also literally from her chains. She weeps and he hugs her. He shouts at the men nearby who are punishing the sorcerers, “You shall not judge. Only I shall judge.”

Jesus in The Carpenter’s Son

Jesus needs to learn prayers and Torah. In a school lesson, we see that Jesus does not know Torah by heart. The ambiguity and tension in the relationship between Jesus and Torah is a subtle but interesting aspect of the film. Jesus shows his ability that exceeds memorization of scripture, telling the teacher how long he will live. The teacher takes him home to Joseph and says “This is not the carpenter’s son.”

At home, Jesus reciting the list of prohibited animals from Torah causes an idol to fall, an idol that Joseph had been hired to make. This leads Joseph to drive Jesus out of the house. “You follow no man. Be a man alone.” Later, when Joseph tries to explain this to his employer, the man says that his son is Beliar, and they will kill him. When Jesus returns to Mary and Joseph, the latter is angry. Joseph says, “Whoever is near him is near the fire”, echoing a saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas (which, for those who might be confused about this, is not the same work as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas).

Mary confronts Joseph saying, “You have always doubted him, even before he was born, just as you doubt me.” Joseph shouts back, “My faith has been shattered because of you, and because of that boy.” Joseph asks whether he is the son of a Roman. Meanwhile, Satan alerts Jesus that Joseph is not his father.

A snake bites Joseph as he looks for Jesus. Jesus says to him, “Tell me who my father is.” Joseph answers, “He is the cause of all things.” Jesus says, “Tell me his name.” Joseph says, “It is a sin to say it.” Jesus: “Speak his name.” Joseph: “Yahweh.” Jesus, his mind finally at rest about his origins, heals Joseph. This in turn seemed to me to reassure Joseph that what he spoke in faith laced with doubt has now been confirmed.

At one point a boy runs to tell angry mob with torches that he has found Jesus. Jesus wills him to die and he does. This ability of Jesus to kill and restore life is the material closest to the source material in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

In another conversation, Satan tells Jesus “There is freedom in knowledge. Do you know now that mankind is cruel?” Satan adds, “This place is a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” Jesus confesses that he killed a boy. Satan responds that Jesus didn’t kill the boy, but rather freed him from this terrible world.

Satan contiues, “I was a very beautiful thing. Such a thing I cannot describe in words. He shunned me. He would let no one be his equal. But he prepared a home for me. There is purity in that place. Order. Now you are with me, we will go there together.”
Jesus: “Who are you?”
Tempter: “I am the accuser of light. I am the Adversary.”
Jesus looks at a place that is a gateway to the underworld and sees distorted bodies writhing in hell. That is when he recognizes that this friend, this fellow adolescent, is Satan, there to torment him.

Later, as Satan attacks Joseph and Joseph cowers in fear, Satan says, “Cruelty is a virtue. Look, he reveres me for my cruelty.” Satan suggests that Jesus ought to kill Joseph, since Joseph had lied to him. A snake comes out of a person Satan has possessed and threatens Joseph. Jesus grabs it. Satan then hits Jesus with a rock, drags him, and tries to drown him. Jesus gets the upper hand and pummels Satan, poking his fingers into his eyes. Joseph then calls Jesus by name as Yeshua. When Jesus comes to Joseph, Joseph says to him: “He means to tempt you. You must teach it that you will not bring your strength to bear for evil. You must forgive it.” Jesus tries to heal Joseph, but Joseph says “Let me go.”

As the sun rises, Joseph asks, “What awaits us when we turn to death?” Jesus answers, “Dust.” Joseph then dies and a halo appears around his head.

Jesus weeps and hugs Satan. Satan says, “We are the same.” Jesus leaves Satan weeping and walks away from him.

Concluding Thoughts on The Carpenter’s Son

The thing that sold me on the film, which was in many respects not that engaging as far as plot and characters, were two things. The exploration of what it would mean to be a child with divine power, and his parents, in the midst of a demon-haunted and evil-infested world is one, which I’ve already mentioned. The other is Joseph’s counsel to Jesus that he must forgive Satan. That’s a radical yet Christianly appropriate move that many theologians refuse to make, yet this movie dares to.

There is a striking parallel between Jesus’ heavenly Father sternly driving out Satan and Jesus’ earthly father driving him out. This highlights the tension between the character of God as depicted by statements human and diabolical, and the character that Joseph tells Jesus that he must embody near the end of the film. That tension remains unresolved at the end of the film, and it is a problem, albeit one that is found in much Christianity as well, in which the “Old Testament God” is stern whereas Jesus introduces love. The depiction of the teacher’s Torah instruction and Joseph’s in prayer convey an impression of Judaism that is harsh, which is how Christians have long depicted it in order to make it a contrasting backdrop for Jesus. That’s problematic, in ways that I have emphasized elsewhere.

Ultimately, this film explores Jesus not as a pre-existent person dressed as a human, but as a super-human with miraculous abilities but not with supernatural maturity, and thus he must figure out who he will be and how he will use his power. As an exploration of themes of power and forgiveness, of what means are effective in combatting evil, the movie is thought-provoking. If you’re really not into horror at all, you probably shouldn’t watch it just because it is a Jesus movie. If you like horror and are interested in religion, then you’ll likely want to see this cinematic depiction of what happens when Jesus shows up in the realm of the horror film. If you can tolerate horror but aren’t a fan, but are very interested in cinematic depictions of Jesus, then I recommend approaching the movie with curiosity. Like The Last Temptation of Christ, if judged in terms of historical accuracy or fidelity to ancient source material, it will be judged problematic. Yet like that film, The Carpenter’s Son raises and explores important questions about Christology, good and evil, temptation, finding one’s vocational path, and the human condition.

Have you seen The Carpenter’s Son? If so, what did you think of it?

For More on The Carpenter’s Son

Peter Chattaway has an interview with film director Lotfy Nathan. See also his Newsbites.

Tripp Fuller shared the conversation that he and filmmaker Sarey Martin Concepción had with film director Lotfy Nathan

LA Times review of the movie

AP News coverage of the film

Jesus and Tom Riddle as Children

ReligionProf Podcast with Deb Saxon (Extracanonical Texts in Musical and Animated Settings)

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