Chilly ‘Ebenezer’ can’t find its footing

  Director Ti West's horror trilogy — X, Pearl, and MaXXXine  — established him as a major contributor to the big-screen wave of horror that has broken over the last decade.

   Now, West moves toward the mainstream with Ebenezer, his genre-muddled version of A Christmas Carol, the Charles Dickens classic that has inspired hundreds of adaptations, my favorite being the 1951 edition starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge.

   Ebenezer also marks a noteworthy moment in the career of Johnny Depp. Depp, who hasn’t appeared in a major theatrical release since 2023’s Jeanne du Barry, plays Ebenezer Scrooge, a role that returns him to the spotlight.

   Again operating under heavy make-up, Depp hardly breaks new ground with an Ebenezer who evolves from scowling misanthropy to giddy generosity, the transition being attributable to Christmas, the holiday Dickens helped establish as an all-purpose cultural motivator of character transformation.

     Working with his biggest budget yet, West turns Ebenezer into an effects-laden ghost story, using Dickens’ trio of ghosts as a framework. The Ghost of Christmas Past (Andrea Riseborough), Ghost of Christmas Present (Tramell Tillman), and Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (Robert Strange) help polish the movie's light horror gloss.

   At the same time, West pretty much honors Dickens' story as he fleshes out Scrooge's psychological dossier. He was rejected by his drunken father, bullied as a child, wracked with grief over his sister’s death, and diminished by a botched romance. Miserabilism became his brand.

       In addition to the ghosts, the supporting cast includes Ian McKellen, terrific as always, as Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s skinflint partner. After his death, Marley’s chain-dragging ghost introduces Scrooge’s chastening journey. 

       Rubert Grint makes a worthy Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s clerk. Daisy Ridley glows with virtue as Emily, Cratchit’s wife, and Freddie Lee Gray plays Tiny Tim. Sam Claflin has a nice turn as Fred, the nephew who has been vainly trying to draw Ebenezer back into the family fold.

     West's Ebenezer can’t quite do justice to the movie's eerie ambitions or its uplifting moral.  Moreover, building the movie around the ghosts creates a programmatic structure that tends toward dullness and makes West’s aims a little too transparent.

  “Oh, yes,  no wonder Ebenezer became such a sourpuss.” 

    Perhaps, it's too much to expect West to have created a startling new adaptation of Dickens' oft-told tale, but his movie drags the chains of duty to Dickens without charting an intriguing course of its own.

    In short, I left Ebenezer shrugging my shoulders. I wasn't thinking, "Bah humbug!" But my spirits weren't buoyed either.

     Perhaps it's too much to expect West to have created a startling new adaptation of Dickens' oft-told tale, but his movie drags the chains of Dickens' story without charting an intriguing enough course of its own.

      In short, I left Ebenezer shrugging my shoulders. I wasn’t thinking, “Bah humbug!” But my spirits weren’t buoyed either.