Ebenezer Review

Ebenezer is in theaters on November 13.

One need only look to The Muppet Christmas Carol, the best Christmas movie of them all, to understand why Charles Dickens’ novella has endured countless adaptations over the nearly two hundred years since it was published. The miserly Ebenezer Scrooge’s confrontation with the ghosts of his past with hopes for a brighter future is so fundamentally strong that a staging of it by Michael Caine and Kermit the Frog that blends all sorts of tones and meta commentary has room not only to work, but to stand as an unambiguously respected adaptation of the text. Ti West’s Ebenezer feels most focused on illuminating the darker corners of Dickens’ tale, but the broad and classically Johnny Depp performance at its heart holds it back from ever elevating into a more meaningful adaptation of the text.

A Christmas Carol is, of course, a ghost story at its heart, and Ti West’s long history in the horror genre - including a ghost story of his own, The Innkeepers - makes him an interesting director to see paired with the material. West’s instincts on how and where to amp up A Christmas Carol’s spooky trappings are strong from the top down, and they’re most evident in Ebenezer’s production design. Ebenezer leans on the austere chill of its Victorian London setting well with practical sets and stages that instantly read as Christmas Carol-appropriate. The destitute and dour look of the film illuminates both the poverty Scrooge hates and the corresponding spiritual bankruptcy from which he suffers in equal measure. Tyler Bates’ string-heavy score helps to push that sense of unease, with the highlight piece being a driving and ominous string quartet version of “Carol of the Bells” played over the opening credits of Londoners bringing out decorations and getting ready for the approaching holiday.

While Ebenezer is largely a faithful adaptation of Dickens’ novella, West and writer Nathaniel Halpern embellish certain turns of the plot to underscore either Scrooge’s inner turmoil or the story’s horror elements, like adding a new prologue featuring Scrooge’s business partner Jacob Marley (Ian McKellen). The prologue serves the dual purpose of starting West’s darker take on the story off with a body (“Marley was dead: to begin with,” and all that) and giving McKellen just a little bit more time on camera. Formative events like Ebenezer’s tough childhood or his failed engagement with Belle get expounded on with enough care to work on their own merits, but with Depp’s Ebenezer tough to connect to emotionally, little of the new additions wind up feeling impactful enough to justify the time spent on them. Despite coming in just under two hours, each of the “staves” that Ebenezer is chaptered into routinely taper off in momentum before West is moving on to the next act of the story.

A director’s influence can only take Ebenezer Scrooge’s story so far. Any staging of A Christmas Carol lives and dies on the casting of its Scrooge: the whole story is told over Scrooge’s shoulder, and whatever catharsis the audience is able to experience through Scrooge’s own as he wakes up on Christmas Day a changed man has to be channeled through an accessible and readably human performance. That leaves Johnny Depp’s work here as Ebenezer Scrooge feeling like a frustrating misfire.

Depp’s Scrooge is a constant source of lively and unpredictable energy through the well-trodden events of Ebenezer’s story, it’s just not at all clear by the end of the film that it was the right energy for the more straightforward approach West employs throughout the rest of the film. Depp’s conception of Scrooge, with all of its physical business and explosive emotion, feels better suited to stage than screen. What’s all the more frustrating is that Depp is not only capable of stepping down the zaniness of his Scrooge when called on, but he’s far better in the role when doing so. The few moments throughout the film where Depp plays Scrooge with some reserve, like when trying to break through to his past selves to beg them to do things differently, connect pretty effectively, and the final stretch where Scrooge is able to rejoice in his overnight rebirth gives Depp’s manic approach to the character a better fitting context.

With Depp’s campy performance pushing Ebenezer’s otherwise macabre presentation to its breaking point, supporting players like Rupert Grint, Ellie Bamber, and Sam Claflin do a lot to keep the story grounded in more recognizable feelings. Grint’s affability as Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit cuts Depp’s hissing negativity well, and Ebenezer could have used more of the genuine light that he and the Cracthit family contributes, if only for the contrast to make all of the film’s darkness feel that much more oppressive.

On that note, points to whoever was responsible for casting Freddie Lee-Grey as Tiny Tim: he has nary more to say than “god bless us, everyone”, but wow, does that kid step up to the plate and knock it out of the park when called to do so. As Scrooge’s nephew Fred, Claflin embodies the optimism and good nature that Scrooge detests with ease, with Daisy Ridley stopping by for what amounts to a cameo as Fred’s more skeptical wife Clara and walking away with one of the film’s bigger laughs. Bamber’s Belle is just as effective as Fred at portraying the warmth that Scrooge willingly and cruelly let go of years before.

West makes no attempt to give the spirits that visit Ebenezer any cheery or pleasant characteristics: they’re dead and they hate it, and from the looks of them, they have good reason to feel that way. McKellen’s Marley does get a brief moment to act as a canary in a moral coalmine for Scrooge early on, but he’s mostly here to lend some gravitas to the obligatory “you will be haunted by three spirits” moment, the kind of thing he’s been doing in his sleep for decades. Not helping his efforts at all are the cheap-looking visual effects doing the work to create McKellen’s spectral form. The poor quality of the visual effects extends to the dozens of nameless ghosts that arrive to put the fear of Father Christmas in Scrooge’s heart by banging on windows and going “ooh” and “ahh”, plaguing both he and the audience throughout the film.

Thankfully, the headliner Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come are better designed and realized. Andrea Riseborough’s bride-like Ghost of Christmas Past is the most outwardly eerie, with milky eyes and a detached, childlike voice which really cut through Depp’s bombast as Scrooge revisits a painful chapter of his younger days. Riseborough’s performance is monotone by design, but West supports Risebrough’s ethereal presence with some of the film’s more outwardly horror-coded cinematography, with some effective long takes that pull a sort of “Texas switch” by having her teleport quickly and creepily across long distances. Tramell Tillman’s Ghost of Christmas Present is more mercurial, and Tillman’s intensity and lack of patience with Scrooge’s waffling both give the sense that he could throttle Scrooge at the drop of a nightcap. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come maintains the slow-moving, wordless and faceless presentation it usually does, but West at least gives it a haunting Predator-like clicking sound to set it apart.