“If his death must be put in a ledger, the loss column would be appropriate.”
Billed as a “Gothic dark fantasy/black comedy”, Ebenezer is neither dark nor particularly funny. It is only a fantasy in that there are ghostly visitors in the night and only Gothic in the sense that the spectral visits take place during the Victorian era. Ebenezer is an inconsistent and uneven film, heartfelt one moment and embarrassingly cringe the next. Great production design is saddled with sad special effects, while some genuinely excellent performances are shackled to a clumsy script.
“Walk with me to the past. Let us see if it is as you remember.”
Ebenezer is a 2026 Paramount/Skydance production directed by Ti West from an adaptation of the 1843 Charles Dickens novella, A Christmas Carol, by Nathaniel Halpern. Johnny Depp leads a cast including Ian McKellen, Daisy Ridley, Rupert Grint, Andrea Riseborough, Tramell Tillman, Sam Claflin, Arthur Conti and Elle Bamber.
“My mother used to say that a rotten apple doesn’t mean there are no good fruit.”
“Just the sort of lie that a woman would feed her child.”
It is 1843. Victoria reigns. It’s been seven years since the death of the moneylender, Jacob Marley (McKellen), and his absence weighs heavily on his partner, Ebenezer Scrooge (Depp). As he prepares to close up his cold and dark shop on Christmas Eve, his clerk, Bob Cratchit (Grint), asks for time off to spend time with his family on account of the next day being Christmas. A bitter Scrooge reluctantly agrees and then marches through crowds on the wind-swept, cobbled streets of London towards his grim and imposing townhouse. Centered on his door is a brass knocker in the shape of the Lion of England grabbing the ring in its mighty jaws. As he eyes it curiously, the knocker morphs into the face of his departed partner, Marley, who drops the ring from slack lips and begins to howl
This freaks Scrooge out. He slams the door shut behind him, locking it tightly. He has no staff to meet him when he arrives and quickly makes his way through the joyless, leaking halls of his spartan apartments, climbing the stairs to his chambers and shedding his outer apparel along the way. Eerie noises from below draw him out of his rooms and he glances down to the base of the stairs where he sees the inexplicable: scores of translucent and ghostly lockboxes connected to chains being dragged across his tiles by what?
Not waiting to find out, he darts back into his bedchambers and secures the door with several more locks. They do not hold. In lurches the spirit of Jacob, yoked to hundreds of chains securely wrapped around his arms, legs, neck, and chest. Upon receiving confirmation that the being before him was, in fact, once his partner, Scrooge takes this as well as one would expect. He panics and runs, only stopping when the chains make it clear that flight is not an option.
No. Ebenezer can’t escape. Jacob has a purpose for being there. He warns his friend that a much worse fate awaits Scrooge when he dies unless he changes his ways. Marley tells him that three other spirits will visit him that night and that Ebenezer would be best served by paying them heed. The first will come when the clock strikes one.
Will Scrooge decide that Marley’s warnings are infernal instructions sent to steer him astray? Will Ebenezer listen to the supernatural suggestions of the ghosts when they arrive? Can such a miser and a miserable man truly turn over a new leaf? See Ebenezer if you want to find out.
“I see you only focus on the shadow, not the sun; I release you with a full heart and a memory of what you once were.”
Ebenezer’s production design is excellent. The depiction of Victorian London makes the rigid stratification of the population by class and wealth abundantly clear. Like the original Dickens novella, the film is broken up into five sections called staves. Depp is amusing as Ebenezer; McKellen kills it in his limited screen time. Both Sam Claffin and Daisy Ridley are well cast as Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, and his wife Clara. Ellie Bamber is just radiant as Belle Clarke, Ebenezer’s long-lost love. Every scene she’s in is so much better because of it.
The film strives for some heavy emotional moments, but only two really land. The two that work DO hit pretty hard. It’s not terribly important, but the film breaks the rules of magic that it establishes early on. The look of the Ghost of Christmas Past dances on the edge of absurd and then plunges over it when the ethereal creature begins vomiting white light. The makeup and decay effects on the Ghost of Christmas Present are fantastic, but his ribs acting as a makeshift cage for the ravening spirits of Ignorance and Want look very amateurish. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come also vomits, but in a very bizarre scene, he pukes out a raven. Scrooge is being stalked by ravens throughout the run-time of Ebenezer, possibly because someone confused Dickens with Edgar Allan Poe.
This reviewer believes one shouldn’t remake good movies. The capitalist urge is to remake films that resonate and come with a built-in audience for greater box-office reward. The creative urge is to remake BAD movies and make them better films. That being said, there is the idea that, lest it be forgotten, a story needs to be repeated for a new generation and told repeatedly for four to seven years as new kids age in and older ones age out of interest.
Many creators, actors, writers, and directors love to put their own spin on things. Surely the cast and crew of Ebenezer did. However, there are literally hundreds of versions of Dickens’ story to be seen on stage, streamed on TV and watched in the theatre. One of the better ones is a 1999 version starring Sir Patrick Stewart as Scrooge (who also did a one-man play in 1988 as every character in the novella), and in this reviewer’s opinion, the BEST one (by far) is Michael Caine’s 1992 emotionally resonant musical, A Muppet Christmas Carol. Ebenezer is a streamer.
Ebenezer is in the theatres 11/13/2026.
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher