Johnny Depp’s Ebenezer cannot redeem Dickens’s Scrooge

Johnny Depp stars as Ebenezer Scrooge in Ti West’s “Ebenezer,” an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” that Paramount Pictures will release in theaters on Friday, November 13. Depp supplies mugging rather than feeling, leaving a dull and dreary adaptation unable to make Scrooge’s moral change believable.

Scrooge’s arc is clear: a cruel miser confronts three Christmas ghosts, then accepts charity and human connection. West keeps the Christian framework of redemption and forgiveness, and makes the visitations frightening. The role also offers Depp a possible route toward career rehabilitation.

I draw a pointed analogy between Dickens’s insistence that even an odious person can be saved and a self-made pariah confronted by cancel culture. The comparison carries a caveat: it marks a tension, not proof that either character deserves absolution. The performance must carry the moral argument.

Depp reportedly accepted the role at a fraction of his usual rate, after earning more than $250 million for the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. I suspect he might have done the film for free. The report identifies neither source nor terms, so it cannot establish the fee or prove a calculated comeback strategy.

The film leans on transformation. Johnny Depp’s Scrooge states the arc plainly: “I was once good, and I know I can be again!” The promise fails in Depp’s face. Scrooge also saves a cherubic boy from death and admits a freezing beggar for a warm cup of tea, yet the performance still withholds reform.

What does Depp’s casting change for “Ebenezer”?

Depp’s casting turns the adaptation’s central obstacle into its failure. Scrooge must register fear, shame and lasting change. Depp’s exaggerated mugging cannot show that movement, and stronger supporting performances cannot repair the missing arc.

His troubled off-screen reputation does not help, but the immediate problem is craft: I think Depp has become very bad at acting. His post-Sparrow retreat from artistic curiosity has stretched his former charm into caricature, and I no longer empathize with his screen presence.

Nathaniel Halpern’s screenplay stays faithful to the core story. West, director of “Pearl” and “The House of the Devil,” avoids the pop-culture shortcuts of other versions: no Muppets, no ghosts of girlfriends past, no uncanny, motion-captured Jim Carrey. Fidelity, however, does not solve a weak lead.

West’s solution is to scare Dickens. “Ebenezer” is not a horror film in the strict sense, but the PG-13 film includes a handful of gentle jump scares. I find most of the embellishments cosmetic, leaving the story without the visceral force its imagery promises.

Checco Varese’s grimdark cinematography and Eve Stewart’s Yharnam-esque design make Scrooge’s office look haunted and drain life from Victorian London. The atmosphere may appeal to younger viewers seeking holiday spice. It is also too staid and oppressive, in my view, to become a perennial favorite.

West begins with a musty prologue in which Scrooge’s business partner dies with his mouth wide open. Ian McKellen plays Marley in what I compare to the year’s most conspicuous The Christophers performance. The prologue establishes the film’s appetite for shock.

The action then jumps to Christmas Eve 1843. Rupert Grint plays Bob Cratchit, the underpaid clerk whom Scrooge resents for taking the next day off. The review jokes that human resources departments are a 20th-century invention. When Marley’s ghost enters Scrooge’s bedchamber, he wets himself.

Reaction shots register Depp’s grimacing face through exaggerated expressions closer to silent cinema than controlled fear. He fails as both the glowering miser and the smiling man grown better than his word. Scrooge takes active pleasure in cruelty, which sends the film walking in circles without exposing the hollow man its redemption requires.

His performance supplies spectacle without inner life. Depp does not expose the hollow man the story needs; pushing his mouth into a smile would say more than his mugging reactions.

The film is most effective when it returns to basic human stakes, largely because its supporting cast counters Depp. Sam Claflin plays Fred, Scrooge’s kind-hearted nephew, and Daisy Ridley plays Fred’s wife, Clara. They have little to do, but Fred is Scrooge’s last connection to his dead mother. Their estrangement makes the possibility of cordial reconciliation touching.

• Ghost of Christmas Past: Andrea Riseborough, the “To Leslie” star, appears as a white-eyed spirit resembling “The Conjuring.” She supplies the film’s funniest jolt, then seems to linger in frame. The scene shows young Scrooge bullied by other children and separated from his beloved older sister.
• Ghost of Christmas Present: Tramell Tillman plays a boisterous, round-bellied figure whose face appears to rot in real time. I find Tillman equally compelling. A reveal based on Dickens honors the text, but the design exposes West’s limited conviction in the horror approach and lacks Robert Eggers’s follow-through.
• Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Robert Strange plays a CGI, Nazgûl-coded figure who forces Scrooge to confront his own emptiness. The sequence carries the story’s key message, but Depp’s slapstick keeps it from landing.

The film tells Scrooge: “The flame of humanity still flickers within you.” Depp’s slapstick keeps the flame at a low simmer. I do not believe it either goes out or is rekindled. His Scrooge is too elastic and self-amused to suggest permanent reform, and he cannot hold one facial expression for more than a few seconds.

I anticipate the objection that this attacks Depp rather than the film, and grant it partial validity. I would rather like “Ebenezer” despite Depp than dislike it because of him. That follows Dickens’s belief that everyone can be redeemed, by degrees or miracle. Depp’s “comeback” is another thing for him to regret.

If West wants the horror framing and the redemption plot to reinforce each other, he will need a Scrooge whose transformation registers before the final ghost leaves the room; without that, “Ebenezer” will be a film whose supporting cast illuminates a hollow lead.