Scrooge: Ti West, Johnny Depp and redemption (CRITICAL)

Ti West adapts a Christmas Carol in a lively and careful gothic version but which ends with too many good feelings. The real subject of the film is elsewhere: the return of Johnny Depp in the role of a man who wants forgiveness.

A filmmaker with a background in horror was obviously needed to bring new shine to A Christmas Carol, the book by Charles Dickens, which before being a children’s tale is a ghost story. Paramount has entrusted this umpteenth adaptation to Ti Westauthor of the X trilogy, Pearl and MaXXXine, and we understand this choice very quickly;

West’s Victorian London is sticky, dirty and disturbing, and we think more of From Hell or Sweeney Todd (well, two other gothic tales with Johnny Deppwe’re getting there!) than Disney’s Scrooge. And when the specters enter the scene, the film sometimes becomes sinister… Ian McKellen in Marley, Andrea Riseborough And Tramell Tillman in spirits of Christmases past and present give their visits a gravity that the family versions had ended up erasing. And if the scenario of Nathaniel Halpern remains faithful to Dickens, we feel that the filmmaker has put his horrific visions (even if PG13 requires, we feel that the director is holding back) at the service of this story.