synopsis

“marley is dead.”

— El Scrooge

Young professional Eleanor "El" Scrooge is left numb and stormy by the unexpected death of her best friend and business partner Jacob Marley on Christmas Eve. Pushing her memories, her feelings, and an unopened gift aside, El slowly crumbles. Partners since meeting in college, El and Marley were drawn together by their differences just as much as their similarities; he was the devil-may-care foster kid charming his way through a surface-level life, and she the dark side of her sister's shadow. Together, they could both be alone — just how they liked it. But his death brought with it a whole new kind of loneliness.

Miserable and struggling to keep their online publishing startup afloat, El also has to deal with her intrusive sister Freddie, her ambitious new colleague Robert Cratchit, and most of all her own life without Marley. As the anniversary of his death approaches, Marley’s ghost returns to persuade El to open the gift he left her before he died. With her tethers to reality almost fully severed, can opening Marley’s Christmas gift help her see through a new lens and somehow reconnect her with her past, ground her present, and change her future? 

This modern retelling of Dickens' original ghost story A Christmas Carol explores the timeless themes of "peace on earth and goodwill toward men" through the lens of more contemporary issues such as loneliness, depression, anxiety, drug abuse, and last but not least: suicide. How far would you go to forget? The truth is, we all have shadows.

“we all have secrets, el. We all have shadows we’d prefer to keep out of.”

— Jacob Marley