Review: Alt-Jesus retelling 'The Carpenter's Son' is worse than blasphemous it's boring

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What would Jesus do if his early years were told as an unremarkable horror film?It would probably be another opportunity to forgive, along with the very easy act of forgetting “The Carpenter’s Son,” a dingy alt-biblical slog that doesn’t even have the kitschy sense to use Nicolas Cage properly as a paranoid Joseph who isn’t sure if his kid comes from the good place or the bad one.Writer-director Lotfy Nathan’s inspiration is an apocryphal 2nd century text called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which purports to describe the incident-filled childhood of a temperamental Jesus.It’s never been widely accepted Christian canon, but there’s no reason why what isn’t holy scripture couldn’t be a holy-moly script.

In the Egyptian-American filmmaker’s retelling, a mixed-up boy (Noah Jupe) running from persecution with his devout dad, the Carpenter (Cage), and ethereal mother (a blank-faced FKA Twigs) is a superhero in waiting, with a bloody gauntlet of nightmares to get through first.One of those is surviving his own birth, presented here in a sequence of torchlit, squishy labor that’s far from the twinkly manger of Christmas-diorama harmony.Onscreen, the text reads “Anno Domini,” in case it’s not clear whose umbilical cord is getting cut.

“They’re coming for him,” his papa intones.Mom’s anguished childbirth moaning segues to those of young women nearby having their babies ripped from their arms and thrown into a bonfire.

Barely escaping the scrutiny of the king’s killers, this new family escapes.Awards The actor has been up and he’s been down.

He’s earned excellent reviews for his latest, ‘Pig,’ and looks forward to more projects.A time shift takes us to when the boy is 15 (not to mention sullen, bored-looking and wracked by violent visions of crucifixion).Our trio lands in a remote settlement that affords them the chance at a simple life, ...