Scrooge is in theaters: our review of the film starring Johnny Depp

Adapting Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol means revisiting a story whose broad outlines everyone already knows. So we were eager to see what Ti West would do with Scrooge. And yet, from the very first images, we rediscover the pleasure of encountering a tale for the first time. We laugh, we cry, and we gladly let ourselves be swept along by the three spirits who come to shake up the old miser on Christmas Eve.

In theaters since November 11, 2026, the film follows Ebenezer Scrooge, a lonely moneylender who despises the holidays. On Christmas Eve, the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, played by Ian McKellen, tells him that three spirits will visit. Each confronts him with a period in his life and the consequences of his choices. Alongside Johnny Depp, the cast includes Rupert Grint as Bob Cratchit, Sam Claflin as Fred, as well as Andrea Riseborough, Tramell Tillman and Daisy Ridley. Nathaniel Halpern wrote the screenplay. Mylène Farmer wrote and performs the end-credit song.

A Victorian London That Sends Shivers Down Your Spine

What first amazed us was the film grain. It gives Victorian London a texture reminiscent of the great fantasy films of the ’90s. We enjoy taking in every corner of the setting, and the apparitions seem to belong to the same world as the living.

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Ti West, the director of X, Pearl and MaXXXine, gives the story a surprising darkness for a Christmas film. After nightfall, the streets grow unsettling, and some of the apparitions have a distinctly horror-movie feel. This atmosphere could frighten younger viewers, especially those who are sensitive to ghost stories.

Johnny Depp makes us care about Scrooge

The entire cast is excellent, and Johnny Depp delivers one of his finest performances here. There’s something funny about Scrooge’s stubborn refusal to enjoy himself. Then, as the spirits take him back through his own past, that same rigidity becomes moving. We understand how much it costs him to face his life, and eventually find ourselves caring about the man whose bad temper amused us just a few scenes earlier.

It was this shift from laughter to tears that we liked most. If you love Christmas stories that give you chills as much as they move you, Scrooge is a great film to discover in theaters.

To keep the cinema experience going, check out this month’s cinema releases in November, the films showing now, and our selection of action films and blockbusters to see in theaters.

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