Ebenezer is like taking someone who is cheerful, warm, and dressed in bright colors, putting them in head-to-toe black, and giving them gothic makeup. You manage to change everything about their outward appearance, but you can’t change their soul, or the smile peeking out from under all that black makeup. The result is something rather twisted and incongruous. On the surface, it promises a darker take on the A Christmas Carol story we all know. But the darkness never goes beyond the visuals.
Set in Victorian England, the film is full of gothic elements and delivers strong cinematography on a relatively modest budget. Most of the credit here should go to director Ti West, whom you may remember for the 2022 film X (formerly known as Twitter). I know, bad joke. In any case, West’s direction is what makes the film visually impressive. Then again, we already have a huge body of visual material from gothic stories set in the Victorian era. Building such sets, getting the lighting right, and adding a few period costumes to create that atmosphere isn’t especially hard. The film does its part on that front.
That said, the film’s biggest ambition, and in a sense its reason for existing, is to bring Johnny Depp back to Hollywood. And you feel that uncomfortably in every second of it. It gets so bad that it overshadows the film itself and keeps you from sinking into its atmosphere. At least that was the case for me.
First of all, what we’re watching feels like a stew made by melting down all of Johnny Depp’s past characters in one pot. Depp’s performance lacks the energy to convince you that you’re watching Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s caricatured, superficial, and one-dimensional. After the transformation from a loathsome man into a good one, he never manages to make you feel that he has truly changed. Every time you begin to feel a little of that Christmas miracle, the part of the story about a person’s transformation that fills you with love and hope, Depp’s wildly over-the-top acting makes you wince.
In fairness, there’s plenty that makes the film watchable. The direction is good, the story is a classic we all know, and the atmosphere is nice. In supporting roles, Ian McKellen and Rupert Grint also do quite well. Even so, all of it gets crushed under Depp’s performance.
I’ve criticized Depp so much that I forgot to mention how the film fumbles its attempt at a dark version of a familiar Christmas tale. I think a good example here is last year’s low-budget, cheap-looking, yet somehow endearing The Death of Snow White. It took the classic Snow White story and made it truly dark, with plenty of murder, and it succeeded in being a genuinely dark version of a children’s fairy tale.
Ebenezer, by contrast, comes down to the example I opened with: a dark reinterpretation built purely on show. It’s nice that they stayed faithful to the story, since it’s one we already know and love, and we can watch it one more time. But at the same time, you contradict the very promise you made. You brush aside, with the back of your hand, opportunities that could have made the story even more interesting.
