Mark Reviews Movies: SILENT NIGHT (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 2, 2021

Silent Night is a particularly haunting tale of an impending apocalypse—not only because it directly addresses the terror of encroaching and inescapable death, but also because it examines the absurdity of the interim. These people are going to die very soon. They know it as a certainty. What are you supposed to do with that information? What the hell can you do in the meantime?

For this group of childhood friends, who have grown up to see each other live seemingly fulfilling lives and marry amongst themselves and have or plan to have kids, there's only one answer: a party. It is Christmas, after all, which seems cosmically convenient under the circumstances—apart from, you know, the end of all life on the planet.

These are the kind of people who don't need an excuse to have a party, but they're also the types who wouldn't pass up an excuse, either. Life gets in the way, after all—what with the jobs, the kids, the school functions, and all of that other stuff. It's hard to make time to get together, so there's no better time than a holiday, when nobody has such responsibilities.

The imminent end of the world probably helps in that regard, too, but why ruin a perfectly good party with such uncomfortable talk of mortality, the likely mistakes humanity made to summon an apocalypse, all of the people who will die horribly and/or alone, and the rest? Just enjoy the moment.

Writer/director Camille Griffin, making her feature debut, begins with that sense of relative ordinariness. The film, by the way, is a comedy, too. That's in part because of the specifics of these characters, the dynamics of these relationships, and the regular chaos/arguments/tensions that come with a gathering of close friends. It's also, though, in the juxtaposition of such normalcy with the gradually revealed stakes of this story. Everyone tries to forget what's happening and have a good time, and yes, it's a bit of that old British stiff-upper-lip attitude, taken, perhaps, to its zenith.

At first, we meet Nell (Keira Knightley) and Simon (Matthew Goode), the hosts of the party, as well as their three sons Art (Roman Griffin Davis) and twins Thomas (Gilby Griffin Davis) and Hardy (Hardy Griffin Davis)—because, yes, this couple is that type (The three sons are played by the director's children). At a house in the English countryside, Nell is preparing the meal with Art's help (He cuts his finger while chopping carrots, and an early sign that something is wrong is how no one seems to care about the blood on the vegetables), and Simon is trying to herd chickens out of their pen and into the wild. It's better if the foxes get them—whatever that ominous observation means.

The rest of the friends are on their way. The stuffy Sandra (Annabelle Wallis) and her boring husband Tony (Rufus Jones) are coming with their daughter Kitty (Davida McKenzie), whom everyone else finds insufferable—and maybe this is the time to say something about it or, probably, just let it be, for all the good it would do. Playful Bella (Lucy Punch) is en route with her sweet girlfriend Alex (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), who isn't originally part of the friend group. The same goes for the current girlfriend of debonair doctor James (Sope Dirisu): a young American woman named Sophie (Lily-Rose Depp). Sandra hates Sophie before she meets the stranger, by the way, because Sandra has feelings for the group's "Prince Charming."

There is, in other words, a lot of tension, even before the group assembles and well before we learn the real reason they have decided to have a party under these still-to-be-disclosed circumstances. Griffin eases us into all of these relationships, as the story establishes itself as a kind of comfortably comedic study of pressure and awkwardness at a holiday party. It's funny, to be sure, as friends gossip behind other friends' backs, the women try to overhear the fight James and Sophie seem to be having, and the obnoxious Kitty reminds Nell of her promise that they would have her favorite dessert. She forgot that, but it's a quick fix, if Simon and Tony just go down to the local store, break a window, and grab some of the treats. Yes, something is definitely amiss here.

All of this is handled with expert balance by the filmmaker, who doesn't hide that something is wrong but doesn't let that get in the way of either the comedy or the establishment of these characters, and the cast, all of whom instantly create a firm sense of who these people are and the feeling that each of them is keeping terror at bay in his or her own way. At dinner, the other shoe drops, when Art finally allows his fear and anger to erupt (Davis is great here, by the way, in a role that demands a lot of the young actor).

Everyone at the table is going to die, along with every person and living thing on the planet—if they haven't already. The adults royally messed up Earth, sending a storm of poisonous gas to spread across the globe—a poison that causes a lot of anguish. The UK government's only solution is a suicide pill—a painless alternative.

Griffin's balance of comedy/character development and foreshadowing is initially strong. Her steadiness in bringing this existential dread, these difficult discussions about mortality, and the constant suspense of when doom will finally arrive, while also maintaining a sense of humor about these characters and the utter irrationality of partying one's way toward the apocalypse, is even more impressive. Everything more or less stays the same, except for Art, who's desperately trying to find some hope in the situation, and Sophie, who has a secret that could affect James' choice of how to die. In that, there is more than a hint of truth. What else could any of us do under such circumstances, except to keep going, as futile as it may be, until everything stops?

To be clear, the film is funny, because it knows these characters and, more to the point, understands human nature. To be clearer, Silent Night is also and unabashedly bleak—even beyond its farcically fatal climax.

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