Can you market to a mainstream genre crowd and an open-minded faith-based audience simultaneously? Magnolia is trying just that with The Carpenter’s Son , writer and director Lotfy Nathan’s life of teenage Jesus based on The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a obscure apocryphal gospel.

The film stars Nicolas Cage and FKA Twigs as Joseph and Mary, Noah Jupe as Jesus and Isla Johnston as a mysterious stranger who targets the family in a remote settlement in Roman-era Egypt. With every pull of temptation, the boy is lured into a forbidden world as terrified Joseph realizes that a demonic power is at work. Violent, unnatural events inexplicably follow Jesus, and he begins to experience nightmarish visions of the future. Finally, he learns the fearsome truth about his new playmate.

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