We were joined on the Popternative show by Noah Jupe (Hamnet, A Quiet Place) and writer-director Lotfy Nathan (Harka, 12 O’Clock Boys) to discuss The Carpenter’s Son, a thriller that blends supernatural horror with Biblical themes.
Now playing in theaters, the film also stars Nicolas Cage (Longlegs, National Treasure), FKA twigs (The Crow, Honey Boy), Souheila Yacoub (No Man’s Land, Dune: Part Two), and Isla Johnston (The Queen’s Gambit, Life After Life).
Inspired by Nathan’s Coptic Christian roots, The Carpenter’s Son follows Joseph (Cage), Mary (FKA twigs), and their teenage son Jesus (Jupe). When a mysterious young girl (Johnston) attempts to lure Jesus away from his father’s strict teachings, Joseph becomes increasingly convinced that something truly evil is influencing his son. A strange, violent phenomena begins to follow Jesus, who soon finds himself tormented by haunting visions of what lies ahead.
“Approaching [the film] from a naturalistic, real, kind of grounded way was always very important to me especially given the subject of this story. I wanted to check those boxes of the visceral parts of the film, but it was just as important to do something that felt intimate,” Nathan tells us.
As an actor who has worked in the horror genre before, Jupe says, “It’s a genre that’s always interested me. I think when I was younger, I was terrified of them. I was always extremely invested in films and extremely terrified by any convincingly scary thing. So making those films, and this one, which also falls under [the] more eerie [category], it’s not about the jump scares. It’s an incredibly truthful [approach] of storytelling.”
Watch the full conversation with Noah Jupe and Lotfy Nathan below.
_