Johnny Depp’s back, baby! It’s a relatively harmless holiday romp, but really… who fuckin’ cares about JOhnny Depp?
Ebenezer
Director: Ti West • Writer: Nathaniel Halpern, based on the novella by Charles Dickens
Starring: Johnny Depp, Rupert Grint, Sam Claflin, Daisy Ridley, Andrea Riseborough, Tramell Tillman, Ian McKellen
USA • 1hrs 55mins
Opens Hong Kong November 12 • IIA
Grade: B-
Perhaps it’s unfair, but in this day and age of the social media based news cycle and the attention economy, Ti West’s Ebenezer is more notable for being alleged abuser (in the US) and “wife-beater” (in the UK) Johnny Depp’s so-called comeback, something the trailer seemed to rub all our faces in than in being a retelling of a Christmas classic. The film is a product of Paramount, now owned by whiny real-life Kendall Roy David Ellison, who’s buddies with all manner of scumball and just put a radical Christian Nationalist in charge of DC (his granny is going to be the deciding factor in what works for Batman, evidently) – after giving Benjamin Netanyahu’s (!) bestie and alleged rapist Brett Ratner a job despite being out of the workforce for… checks notes… 12 years. What better way to make your mark in Hollywood and try to get right with the cool kids than by remaking a film that posits the ultra-rich aren’t all bad, that they have trauma too, and that really, it’s the system that’s a failure, not having so much money you can rig it. No, no, no. Money is good!
But alas, that’s the baggage Ebenezer comes with. If you don’t know the story (seriously?), one Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge’s (Depp) dead former business partner Jacob Marley (Ian McKellen) appears before the old man and tells him oh, boy, were their life choices shit, and he should expect visits from the Ghosts of Christmas Past (Andrea Riseborough), Present (Tramell Tillman) and Future (Robert Strange), who come with a chance for him to change his ways and avoid Marley’s sad afterlife. They come, he changes, he takes Tiny Tim to a doctor. The End.
We don’t really need this
West is now probably best known for directing Mia Goth’s porny horror trilogy X, Pearl (the best one) and MaXXXine, but he has a pile of genre television (Widow’s Bay, Poker Face, Wayward Pines) and anthology horror (V/H/S, The ABCs of Death) credits under his belt, and it shows in Ebenezer. West really leans into the horror elements that may or may not be right there under the surface of Charles Dickens’s original novella (wouldn’t know; never read it) but given its full title is A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas chances are high they are. There’s lots of clanging chains and suddenly chiming clocks, angry birds (not those kind), dark corners and misty alleys, and more ghosts than just Marley – many of them (occasionally dodgy) zombie ghosts. Riseborough’s Past looks straight from J-horror and Tillman’s Present is actively decaying. That’s all woven together with old timey-wimey on-screen titles announcing each of the book’s five staves, each of which introduces the supporting players that help Scrooge see the light and find new respect for that spirit of Christmas bullshit. At one point the film subjects us to a nearly complete rendition of “O Holy Night” or “Silent Night” or some such. We meet Bob Cratchit (Rupert Grint), whose son Tiny Tim (Freddie Lee-Grey) is famously ill with something deadly, in at least three of the staves, as well as Scrooge’s nephew Fred and his wife (Sam Claflin and Daisy Ridley), Scrooge’s only living family who reaches out to him year after year despite repeated rejection and a hearty “Get stuffed.” West keeps Fred’s segments sunny and hopeful, while Cratchit’s are grey with current hardship and looming tragedy.
Guy Pearce played Scrooge in Steven Knight’s (Peaky Blinders) gothic-embracing 2019 version, Patrick Stewart (RIP) classed up Scrooge in 1999, Bill Murray smarmed him up in 1988, and of course Alastair Sim is the OG “What day is it, boy?” from 1951. Those are just four out of approximately 617,244 tellings of this story over the years. And truth be told, Depp is fine, dare I say convincing, as Scrooge. Acting skills haven’t been Depp’s problem recently: the problem has been his execrable public persona stemming from libel/defamation/beating/substance problems, a gleeful smear campaign against Amber Heard (whose credits since 2023 include… oh yeah, none) and simply getting on everyone’s nerves for doing the same shit too much – either as Jack Sparrow or with Tim Burton. When he was the surprise reveal in one of those Fantastic Beasts movies, signalling he was the delight we were in for over Colin Farrell – Colin Fucking Farrell! – it appeared Depp was officially over. Whether Ebenezer is the comeback vehicle he’s hoping for remains to be seen; mid-November for a Christmas film is some kind of cocky. But it’s harmless, familiar and diverting enough to burn two hours on; kids unfamiliar with the story and who are deathly afraid of black and white may go for it, but like so much major studio output of late, it’s unoriginal and wealth-affirming; it doesn’t rock the boat and it doesn’t dig deeper into the source text. But what do I know? I don’t do Christmas so maybe that – and the Squick of Depp – is the last thing anyone wants to think about at the most wonderful time of the year.