Chilly ‘Ebernezer’ can’t find its footing

Director Ti West's horror trilogy — X, Pearl, and MaXXXine — established him as a major contributor to the big-screen wave of horror that has broken over the last decade. Now, West moves toward the mainstream with Ebenezer, his genre-muddled version of A Christmas Carol, the Charles Dickens classic that has inspired hundreds of adaptations, my favorite being the 1951 edition starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge. Ebenezer also marks a noteworthy moment in the career of Johnny Depp. Depp, who hasn’t appeared in a major theatrical release since 2023’s Jeanne du Barry, plays Ebenezer Scrooge, a role that returns him to the spotlight. Again operating under heavy make-up, Depp hardly breaks new ground with an Ebenezer who evolves from scowling misanthropy to giddy generosity, the transition being attributable to Christmas, the holiday Dickens helped establish as an all-purpose cultural motivator of character transformation. Working with his biggest budget yet, West turns Ebenezer into an…

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