‘Ebenezer’ Is Horrifying, but Not in the Way Director Ti West Intended

There have been quite a few adaptations of A Christmas Carol. It may be unfair to ask for anything new here, and wonder if audiences are even clamoring for yet another take on Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella. But those adaptations will keep coming regardless, and so we arrive at Ebenezer, a film that promises to show you Scrooge like you’ve never seen him before, only to show him pretty much like you’ve seen him before. Director Ti West has a reasonable take here by leaning into the horror aspects. He’s not the first filmmaker to connect “visited by ghosts” to “horror film,” but it’s a valid vision. Unfortunately, star Johnny Depp must have missed that memo, as he continues to pull faces, wear facial prosthetics, and speak in a silly voice that stresses a comic bent the surrounding movie never offers. This is not a dark comedy like Sleepy Hollow but rather a broad performance competing with the surrounding narrative, one that’s scary not only by virtue of its designs but in how it loses sight of any joy Dickens sought to impart. If Ebenezer is distinctive in any way, it’s that Christmas Carol adaptations have rarely been so mean-spirited.

The overall story beats should be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a single adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge (Depp) is a grizzled old miser, contemptuous of everyone and particularly of Christmas. On Christmas Eve, he’s visited by the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley (Ian McKellen), who says Scrooge will be visited by three spirits and should heed their warnings if he hopes to avoid the same damnation. Scrooge then goes with the Ghost of Christmas Past (Andrea Riseborough), Present (Tramell Tillman), and Future (Robert Strange) to see snippets from his life as well as that of his clerk, Bob Cratchit (Rupert Grint). We also get more stuff no one asked for, like what happened to Scrooge’s old love Belle (Ellie Bamber) and the potential machinations of a friend of Scrooge’s nephew Fred (Sam Claflin). This is how a short book becomes an almost two-hour movie.

First, let’s cut through the Depp of it all. Billed as a comeback vehicle for the actor, I don’t know if anyone has really missed his schtick. Setting aside the numerous controversies surrounding the star, he’s not a good actor anymore. His choices aren’t interesting, and here, he refuses to let a single moment land. Everything is moving in the direction of horror, and rather than working towards that goal, Depp wants to mug for the camera. He wants to do loud voices. It’s like everything must be Jack Sparrow without understanding why that character worked in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Rather than craft a unique take on Scrooge (a tall order, to be sure, given the number of great actors who have taken on the role), Depp does what he’s done for well over a decade: create distance from the audience by making as many showy choices as possible. 

Putting Depp at the center of the picture derails any vision West may have had for a horror-infused Christmas Carol. To his credit, West knows what he wants this version to be, and while I think overdoing it on every horror aspect is ultimately to the film’s detriment (does the Ghost of Christmas Past have to look like she wandered out of a Conjuring movie? Does the Ghost of Christmas Present have to be so spiteful?), it’s at least a concept. Without Depp, you’d be left with a film that was at least curiously repulsive. There are narrative conceits here that are outright despicable, like how the film stresses that sometimes poor people and those who support them are also corrupt and bad. It’s a miserable conception of the world where Christmas extends just far enough for Scrooge’s redemption and no further. The movie doesn’t even end on Christmas; it ends on December 26^th with a resolution for Bob’s career advancement and financial security. “God Bless Us! Everyone!” Everyone, Tiny Tim? What about criminals? Foolish boy. True redemption is found in your boss being nicer to you.

Without Depp, you’d have a shockingly spiteful riff on A Christmas Carol and one approaching the darkness of Steven Knight’s grim 2019 miniseries. But Depp gives you the worst of both worlds here, turning a woeful adaptation into an outright schizophrenic one. We don’t need to see a version of A Christmas Carol that careens between grim poverty and Depp pulling faces so hard he’s going to tear a muscle. There are directors who can walk that horror-comedy tightrope, but those two genres are at odds here, and, with the added narrative material, make Ebenezer an endless slog. If there’s an upside to there being so many Christmas Carol adaptations, it’s that you have plenty of far superior choices. No one needs to be haunted by the poor decision of seeing this one.

Ebenezer opens in theaters on Friday.