Directed By Ti West

Starring – Johnny Depp, Ian McKellan, Sam Clafin

The Plot – A thrilling ghost story set in Dickens’ London, following one man’s (Depp) supernatural journey to face his past, present and future as he fights for a second chance at redemption.

Rated PG-13 for frightening material

Ebenezer | Official Trailer (2026 Movie) – Johnny Depp, Ian McKellen, Rupert Grint, Sam Claflin

POSITIVES

It goes without saying that the story of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ has been adapted cinematically so often that it leaves each additional attempt feeling tediously unnecessary by the lack of deviated differences amongst them, and while Ti West’s stingy creative approaches to reinvigorate the product leave the film’s justification factor feeling a bit unearned in the elaborately layered larger picture, individually there are some commendable merits that at least help make it a worthy addition amongst the overcrowded fray, beginning with Johnny Depp’s much-anticipated comeback to the silver screen. Considering Ebenezer is an old and bitter man continuously worn down by life’s many annoyances, there’s ample opportunity for Depp to not only dazzlingly don concealing make-up schemes, prosthetics and wig designs that transform the actor’s familiarities seamlessly before our very eyes, but also extensive emotional commitments to character that brings the disparaging depths and underlining loneliness of the crotchety curmudgeon to life with impeccably commanding results, with West enacting a tight grip over portrayal that simultaneously allows Depp free reign to express himself without inscribing some unintentional tonal shifts to the consistency of the material. As grandly dependable as Depp is towards surmising hilarity, detestability, and introspective insight to the helming of the character, he isn’t forced to do it alone, as such an extensively gifted ensemble involving Ian McKellan, Sam Clafin, Daisy Ridley, and Andrea Riseborough, to name a few, provide influentially compelling characterization seemingly behind every candid moment of reliving Ebenezer’s past, present and future, however it’s ultimately Tramell Tillman’s memorable turn as the Ghost of Christmas Present that injects a much-needed shot of bittersweet bereavement to a second act that structurally almost gets away from the film, with Tillman providing a darker, mercurial interpretation that evokes volatile impatience to his physically deteriorating circumstances, all the while providing a confrontational dynamic with Depp that surmises some brilliant banter between them in dialogue. The film also revels in this Gothic horror brand of antiquated atmosphere that sees West digging deep for unsettling imagery and terrifying circumstances not made for children in the audience, instead zeroing in on the naturally darker thematic elements of Dickens’ novel that certainly made this the most ominously menacing installment of the story, to date. West brings haunted house kind of sensibilities to the established Victorian setting that emphasize urgency and vulnerability to the many unmeasurable aspects that continuously go bump in the night during Ebenezer’s life retrospective, made poetically painterly with Checco Varese’s moodily measured cinematography reveling in the murky depths of the character’s coldly chilling isolation factor, and while West isn’t going out of his way to turn this into another one of his heralded horror movies, there’s ample evidence in the atmospheric ambiance to illustrate the influence of one of the genre’s best visionaries behind the scenes, especially as West and his production team enables exceptional perfection towards rendering tangibility into another distinguished period piece setting. As crucial as Depp and West are to the movie’s influential integrity, the production designs from Eve Stewart are undoubtedly the scene-stealer to every framed experience, conveying a cohesive vision of craftsmanship that effortlessly makes this feel like the lost installment to Tim Burton’s decorated filmography. Everything from the lived-in intricacy of the storefront sets, to the authenticity of the outdated wardrobes, to even Varese’s aforementioned visual tapestries exudes this gloomily grim Victorian aura of Dickensian London that intoxicatingly immersed audiences to the aesthetics of a classic Hammer horror film, amplifying the sense of death, dread, and spiritual decay that constantly hangs over Scrooge, without an overly flashy sense of aggressive actions to its articulated execution. In fact, the vintage aesthetics are so ambiently layered that even the film’s introductory credits and ensuing visually chaptered structure are bathed in textural italics so three-dimensionally outlined that they inscribe intuitive instinct to reach for accommodating goggles that came with the purchase of a ticket, rounding out a transformative appeal for a film that feels directly plucked from a simpler time in cinematic history.

NEGATIVES

As experimentally extravagant as everything is atmospherically, there’s a regretful complacency with the script that condemns the film from ever standing out on its own instinctual merits, leading to a predictably bland and conventionalized recounting that not only jumbles the justificative need for another Scrooge retelling, but also surmises what is one of the more frustrating adaptations of the novel of all-time. For starters, organizing the film’s structure into five traditional staves is plucked directly from the novel, where so much of the navigational storytelling feels tragically telegraphed on a beat-for-beat basis, without very much originality to enamor audiences to a new interpretation of these exploited characters, where Scrooge’s very own arc feels like a series of manifested bullet points that are eventually realized, even if extended a little longer than initially expected. On the subject of those minimalized changes, the biggest among them is undoubtedly an integrated love interest during Ebenezer’s adolescence that serves as the empathetic means of the character’s articulation, with a bewildering underdevelopment that should at the very least span across all three arcs of ghost arrivals, but instead feels so crucially underdeveloped by the complete lack of emotionality that spawns from Ebenezer’s introspective illustrating of such, in turn undercutting the urgency of a tragedy factor that frequently keeps us from living and growing within these individualized bubbles in Scrooge’s life. Aside from this, the incremental changes are so minimally influential that they fail to materialize any semblance of curiosity in exploring things from entirely original angle, and while creative conformity isn’t necessarily a problem if executed compellingly seamless, the storytelling here constantly feels sauntered by an overlong runtime and lulls to the consistency pacing that frequently tested my patience. The biggest example of this momentous flatlining stems regrettably from those scenes involving Tillman’s present ghost, where the influential editing feels far more relaxed than other sequences throughout the film, evoking this stalled sensibility to its structural integrity that clamors so long to this section that it leaves less than a half hour for what is arguably the most important act of Dickens’ story, leaving this film feeling every square inch and more of a nearly two hour runtime, that only took the Muppets 86-minutes to effectively execute. Aside from plundered pacing and creative constraints, the experience is just as conflicted by heavy-handed expository dialogue that spells out the lack of trust that West has in his interpretive audience, where much of Ebenezer’s own introspective feelings are expunged by allowing Depp to narrate over the symbolism of the imagery. This is especially the case during the third act involving the ghost of future present, where the character’s own lack of dialogue requires Depp to work gruelingly towards articulating naturalism to such single-sided conversations so obvious and on-the-nose that they eviscerate the earned emotionality that eventually stems from them, but even during the earlier acts there’s autopiloted responses to the interactions so wooden that you can taste the pencil from which they spawned from, leaving these easily digestible lines of dialogue that feel prepackaged for marketing trailers. But perhaps the single biggest regret of it all is an unforeseen disappointing series of scores from longtime West collaborator, Tyler Bates, whose frequent deviation between meandering melodrama, sensual Christmas melodies, and gloomy foreboding leaves the instrumental accompaniment to the imagery feeling bloatedly compromising to the movie’s most emotionally impactful moments, abandoning any semblance of interpretive nuance for scenes that are already one-dimensional on their own measurements. Being that Bates is the very same composer who stitched intense tonal tenacity to West’s Mia Goth trilogy of ‘X’, ‘Pearl’, and ‘Maxxxine’, there’s a counterproductive conventionalism to his articulated arrangements here that are downright unremarkable to their enacted expressiveness, surmising whimsicality and sobering somberness that are rooted in familiarity to outsider Christmas movies before this one, leaving unforeseen sloppiness to his instrumental underlining that eats away at an eerily established atmosphere.

OVERALL
‘Ebenezer’ might very well be the best made adaptation of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, with impeccable production values and gloomy direction from Ti West evoking a darker edginess to this inconsistent incarnation, however its complacent creativity, uneven pacing, and dumbfounding dialogue leave it another reheated leftover to an already overstuffed library of superior predecessors. While Johnny Depp offers a restorative performance that sizzles and shines under the sentimental impulses of the holiday season, the idea to enact a more adult-oriented adaptation eats away at the movie’s implemented notion of familial togetherness, in turn rendering an undercooked goose that is anything but golden.

My Grade: 5.6 or C-