Ebenezer Is A Misguided Attempt to Rehabilitate Johnny Depp's Career

A Christmas Carol is one of the most frequently adapted books in English literature. When you account for plays, TV specials, and spinoffs like Scrooged, the number of artistic interpretations of Charles Dickens’ Christmas classic reaches into the hundreds. And although its marketing promised a fresh take — the official logline is “the name you know, the story you don’t” — in the end, Ebenezer is a straightforward adaptation of A Christmas Carol. It doesn’t really bring anything new, and comes with loads of baggage courtesy of star Johnny Depp. So why bother?

Part of it seems to be capitalizing on the theatrical might of horror movies. Director Ti West began his career as an indie-horror darling before transitioning into whatever this is, and his background — The Innkeepers, from 2011, in particular — is evident in this film’s emphasis on all the spookiest aspects of Dickens’ tale. This is a ghost story, after all, and West embellishes it with 21st-century style horror sound design as well as classical details like gaslights blowing out in a frozen wind every time a spirit draws near.

West is also known for his retro pastiches, and Ebenezer evokes handsome late-‘70s and early-’80s chillers like The Lady in White and The Changeling in the scenes where miserable miser Ebenezer Scrooge (Depp) is visited by three spirits over one fateful night. Costume designer Catherine George (Die, My Love, Problemista) does especially effective work incorporating cadaverous details into the designs of the Ghost of Christmas Past (Andrea Riseborough), the Ghost of Christmas Present (Tramell Tillman), and the Ghost of Christmas Future (Robert Strange, who also played Pyramid Head in Return to Silent Hill).

That being said, The Changeling star George C. Scott played Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1984 TV movie A Christmas Carol, and there’s nothing here that’s any more bone-chilling than in that version of the story. This is presumably part of West’s retro-by-design approach, which keeps the storytelling chilly and efficient in the style of vintage TV movies. He even manages to rein in Depp a little: While the actor spends the entire movie sheathed in his by-now-obligatory prosthetic makeup, the design isn’t as outrageous as in, say, Alice in Wonderland. His performance is a few notches down from full volume as well, which is for the best. He’s annoying enough as it is.

Depp seems to know how to do little but mug for the camera at this point, and his goofy reactions to the film’s otherwise stone-faced horror scenes make it impossible to engage with them in any kind of serious way. Depp has the air of someone who’s been surrounded by sycophants who cry laughing every time he puts a banana on his head for far too long, and after a while the textual — everyone in the story barely tolerating Ebenezer Scrooge — and the metatextual — the rest of the cast gritting their teeth as Johnny Depp shrugs his shoulders and giggles — awkwardly start to blend together.

That’s far from the most uncomfortable meta-narrative surrounding Ebenezer, however. The film is being framed as Depp’s “Hollywood comeback” after multiple franchises — he was even too hot for the Fantastic Beasts series, which is saying a lot — dropped him in the late 2010s amid domestic abuse allegations from his ex-wife Amber Heard. During the subsequent trial, some of the most sickening misogynists in existence came out to defend Depp, and his reputation as an abusive alcoholic is now as much a part of his public image as Pirates of the Caribbean and Edward Scissorhands.

Ebenezer is, in part, an experiment to see if Depp’s name can still sell movie tickets, particularly outside of North America. Universal doesn’t want viewers to forget that it’s Johnny Depp underneath the top hat and glued-on sideburns. And that makes the film’s repeated assertions that Ebenezer Scrooge isn’t such a bad guy, deep down — the only minor changes here are all to make the character more sympathetic — feel like an attempt to reassure audiences that Depp has changed, too. Unlike his fictional counterpart, however, Depp has shown no remorse, and their participation in this image-rehabilitation project will follow those involved — including co-stars Sam Claflin, Daisy Ridley, and Rupert Grint — like their own personal ghosts of Jacob Marley (played here, unfortunately, by Sir Ian McKellen).

One possible justification for Ebenezer is that “every generation has to have its Scrooge,” which sounds like a piece of eye roll-inducing marketing copy. But let’s consider it anyway. In 2026, wealth inequality is worse than it’s ever been, and the billionaire class’ open contempt for the vast majority of humanity would seem to call for a supernatural intervention. But Ebenezer doesn’t want to invoke the present. Very much the opposite — it wants audiences to forget that the last decade of Johnny Depp’s life and career ever happened.

From Universal Pictures, Ebenezer opens in theaters on November 13.