Johnny Depp’s Scrooge Has a Familiar Problem
The trouble with Scrooge is that we know he will improve. Before a chain has rattled, we have mentally bought the turkey and forgiven the old man. That is a difficult place to begin a ghost story. Ebenezer, arriving in US cinemas on November 13, needs to make the happy ending feel uncertain again.
Johnny Depp plays the miser, and Ti West directs. Paramount’s synopsis promises a supernatural confrontation with the past, present and future, and a fight for a second chance. That familiarity gets us through the door, but it can work against the film once we sit down. We can recognise every stop on the itinerary without feeling much at any of them.
The interesting question is what the fear is for. A frightening face can make an audience flinch. A frightening possibility can stay with us after the lights come up. Scrooge’s predicament belongs to the second category: he might discover that the way he has lived has made him impossible to love, and that nobody will particularly miss him. That is a nastier prospect than a monster jumping out of the dark.
There is something appealing about putting this story in the hands of a filmmaker associated with horror. Christmas sentiment can ask very little of us beyond agreeing that kindness is nice. Horror can make that proposition uncomfortable. It can force a character to look at the consequences of withholding kindness, then leave him alone with what he has seen. The generous ending matters more if the alternative has acquired some weight.
The prospect is appealing. Whether West and Depp make it work remains to be seen. A darker treatment can be just as mechanical as a cosy one. More shadows, louder noises and elaborate creatures would not, by themselves, make Scrooge’s crisis more convincing. The real test is whether the man inside the spectacle becomes someone whose choices we want to watch.
Depp has a particularly exposed assignment. Scrooge cannot remain a splendidly unpleasant costume all the way through. The performance must allow us to recognise the defensive habits beneath the cruelty without excusing what those habits do to other people. Too much sympathy too soon would let him off cheaply. Too little would turn the eventual conversion into a switch being flipped.
That is where I would put my attention on opening weekend: the moments after a fright, when the character has to absorb it. Does a revelation change how he looks at somebody? Does embarrassment become remorse? Is generosity an action he chooses, rather than a warm feeling supplied by the soundtrack? Those are small questions for a supernatural production, but they decide whether the ghosts have achieved anything.
A November release also gives this version a useful bit of distance from the annual obligation to feel festive. You can go looking for a ghost story before Christmas viewing becomes a comfort routine. The title may promise a man we already know. I want the film to make him briefly strange again, someone capable of failing his last chance.
Book for Ebenezer if the possibility of an unsettling Christmas film appeals. The worthwhile gamble is that a familiar story can make us worry about reaching an ending we already know.
