Ebenezer review: Johnny Depp’s deadeningly hammy Scrooge ruins an otherwise fine Christmas Carol

Humbled by visions of his past and future, Ebenezer Scrooge stands a changed man, begging the world for a chance at redemption. If there were any doubts about the symbolic purposes of Ebenezer – an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol that serves as Hollywood’s blithe “welcome back” to Johnny Depp – rest assured: the subtext cannot help but claw its way to the surface. Depp, once a cemented A-lister, has been absent from the American film industry for eight years following domestic abuse claims made by his ex-wife, Amber Heard. He denied the allegations, and sued for defamation – having previously lost a separate lawsuit against The Sun, over being branded a “wife beater”. Depp ultimately emerged from the Heard trial with a ruling in his favour. But it was victory at a cost: a long, exposing televised ordeal that dragged his reputation through the mud.

This is, I would argue, necessary context when watching Ebenezer, a mostly well-made and surprisingly traditional adaptation of literature’s most famous redemption story. The film’s extensive advertising campaign promised revisionism: “Think you know his story? Think again” blares one trailer. But the truth is, you needn’t think again at all. Ebenezer iterates on its source material only in occasional flourishes. In this version, for instance, this story begins with Jacob Marley (a relatively game Sir Ian McKellen) still alive, and working in tandem with Scrooge – a prologue presumably included to tee up a memorable shot of Marley’s rictus-faced corpse.

Most of the worthwhile parts of this film stem from director Ti West’s able handling of the more horror-inflected ghost-story elements. West is a filmmaker who has sporadically shown real promise, in the indie horror House of the Devil and the Mia Goth-fronted X films (a trilogy of diminishing returns). As such, there is a confident if restrained sense of style to Ebenezer, which also transplants onto Dickens’s text some nice visual ideas: Andrea Riseborough’s creepy, opaque-eyed makeup as the Ghost of Christmas Past is incredibly effective, likewise the moment when a crow squeezes queasily out the mouth of Christmas Future.

The supporting performances are all perfectly serviceable: Severance‘s Tramell Tillman stands out as a gluttonous, decaying Ghost of Christmas present, while Rupert Grint makes for a annoyingly plain and obliging Bob Cratchett (though that is part of the character, I suppose). Daisy Ridley barely gets a line in as Clara, the wife of Scrooge’s nephew Fred (Sam Claflin), less afraid than her sappy husband to give voice to well-earned resentments.

In more than one way, though, Depp is a problem that Ebenezer cannot overcome. In terms of pure performance, he’s a liability. This is exactly the sort of performance Depp was giving 15 years ago – which is to say, stylised and cartoonish. Most of his lines are delivered with a sort of piqued, squeaky intensity that only occasionally reads as funny. There have, at this point, been a multitude of Christmas Carols on screen, and what distinguishes the great ones is usually the potency of Scrooge himself – whether that’s Alastair Sim back in 1951 or a Muppet-swaddled Michael Caine in the Nineties. A great Scrooge may well have lifted Ebenezer into the canon of lasting Christmas Carol adaptations; Depp’s unmediated shtick instead cheapens it.

Then, of course, there is the baggage. In the eyes of many members of the public, Depp is a man unredeemed – and it’s galling, in a way, to watch him deliver, as Scrooge, his final-act monologue about repentance and the error of his ways. Whether or not Depp deserves the chance at a comeback is slightly moot at this point – he’s already got one – and whether or not this comeback will succeed will be decided not by moral arbitration, but the forces of commerce. In this regard, Ebenezer is a bellwether for Depp’s future in Hollywood. A rumoured return to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise won’t hinge exclusively on Ebenezer’s fortunes, but this will nonetheless be an indicator of how much popular clout Depp has managed to retain. Just what his future holds is, for now, something only the spirits know for sure.

Dir: Ti West. Starring: Johnny Depp, Rupert Grint, Andrea Riseborough, Sam Claflin, Daisy Ridley, Tramell Tillman and Ian McKellen. 12A, 116 mins.