TL;DR: Ti West’s Ebenezer is a dark, atmospheric and properly spooky A Christmas Carol with a strong supporting cast and a great villainous Johnny Depp, held back by a redemption arc that never fully convinces.
Every December, someone in Hollywood decides the world needs one more Scrooge. Most of those versions are cosy reruns of a story we can all recite in our sleep, like replaying a JRPG you’ve already finished three times just for the comfort. Ebenezer is not one of those. Ti West directs this gothic horror reimagining of Dickens’ 1843 novella, working from a script by Nathaniel Halpern, and the man behind X, Pearl and MaXXXine has clearly read the source as what it actually is: a haunting. The premise is unchanged. A wealthy, hateful moneylender is visited by spirits on Christmas Eve and given one last chance to stop being the worst person in London. What changes is the mood, and that change makes this the most interesting Christmas Carol in years, even when it doesn’t fully stick the landing.
West also makes one smart structural tweak. The film opens before Marley’s death, with Scrooge and his partner Jacob Marley trading insults and belittling their clerk, Bob Cratchit, which is not in the book. It looks like throat-clearing at first, but it ends up reframing the whole film. Scrooge isn’t presented as a monster who spawned fully formed; he’s a man shaped by an even nastier mentor, and you can see the rot spreading from one generation of ledger-keepers to the next. It’s the kind of origin-story addition that usually ruins a classic character (looking at you, every villain prequel Disney has made), but here it adds weight without excusing anything.
Johnny Depp’s Scrooge is at his best when he’s at his worst
This is Depp’s first major studio film since his heavily publicised 2022 defamation trial, so whether you like it or not, the performance arrives carrying baggage. Buried under heavy makeup and prosthetics, Depp plays Scrooge as a hunched, spiteful creature who seems to genuinely enjoy his own cruelty. It slots neatly alongside Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd as another trip into Victorian gloom, and in the first half he is magnetic. The sneering, the pettiness and the sheer theatrical contempt for everyone around him make the miser feel dangerous rather than merely grumpy, which is exactly what a horror-tinged version needs.
The problem is the turn. Redemption is the whole point of this story, and Depp is noticeably less convincing once Scrooge starts softening. The transformation feels more like a costume change than an earned emotional shift, and some of his familiar eccentric tics creep back in just when the film needs vulnerability. I’d put him in the conversation with the great screen Scrooges for the villainous stretch, but not for the finale. That imbalance is the film’s biggest weakness, because the warmth at the end is the payoff Dickens built everything toward.
The Ebenezer cast gives the spirits real menace
The supporting ensemble is stacked. Andrea Riseborough plays the Ghost of Christmas Past, Tramell Tillman the Ghost of Christmas Present and Robert Strange the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and West treats all three as genuinely unsettling presences rather than whimsical tour guides. Tillman is the standout for me, because a Ghost of Christmas Present who seems irritated at having to spend his one day on Earth babysitting a miser is a fantastic, slightly sarcastic twist on a role usually played as jolly. Ian McKellen’s Marley is a nastier figure than usual, and the extra screen time from the prologue gives him room to be properly vile.
Elsewhere, Rupert Grint plays Cratchit and Sam Claflin plays Scrooge’s nephew Fred, with Claflin’s Fred reading less like a cheerful idiot and more like a man quietly wounded every time his uncle shuts the door on him. Daisy Ridley, Charlie Murphy, Arthur Conti and Ellie Bamber round out the cast. Not everyone gets much to do, but the casting depth means even small scenes have texture.
A bleak Victorian London built for chills, not chocolate boxes
Visually, this is where West’s horror credentials pay off. His London is grim even on Christmas Day, full of poverty and grime instead of snow-globe charm, and it makes the eventual glimmers of kindness actually register. He also leans into his love of 1970s horror, from crash-zooms to a retro Paramount logo, which gave me the same nerdy grin as spotting an old-school easter egg in a modern game. Production design and sound are among the film’s strongest assets, building dread through atmosphere rather than cheap jump scares.
It isn’t flawless craft-wise. Like many adaptations of this story, the city sometimes feels stagebound, more theatre set than living metropolis. At 116 minutes and rated PG-13, the pacing also sags in places, particularly in the middle stretch where the story we all know starts ticking off familiar beats. Families with younger kids should know the spirits are scarier than the Muppets version ever dared to be, so this is more Crimson Peak with tinsel than The Polar Express.
Verdict
Ebenezer is a sincere, handsomely mounted and genuinely spooky take on A Christmas Carol that remembers Dickens wrote a ghost story first and a holiday card second. Ti West’s horror instincts give the spirits real bite, the supporting cast is excellent, and the Marley prologue adds a thoughtful layer about how cruelty is learned and passed on. Johnny Depp is terrific as the unrepentant miser but less persuasive as the redeemed man, which leaves the emotional climax feeling softer than it should. If you love gothic period pieces, Ti West’s work or alternative takes on Christmas classics, this is worth a cinema trip. If you want the warm, sing-along version or have no interest in watching Depp’s return, the Muppets and Alastair Sim are still waiting for you.