Silent Night (2021)

There are quite a few movies named, "Silent Night," so - just to be sure we're all on the same page - the one we're looking at today concerns a Christmas gathering coinciding with an apocalyptic event in which a massive toxic cloud is sweeping over the globe killing every living human and animal in its wake. The movie is sort of a jumble of genres, incorporating comedy, drama, horror, and science fiction. By far the most famous member of the cast is Keira Knightley, who - between this and the criminally underrated Seeking a Friend for the End of the World - is amassing a background in the quirky apocalypse microgenre. Unfortunately, this doesn't work anywhere near as well as Seeking a Friend, though there's still a great deal to appreciate here.

The movie's narrative is almost entirely focused on a group of adult friends and their children who are coming together for a Christmas celebration/suicide party. The poisonous cloud I mentioned earlier isn't quick or painless, so the British government has distributed "Exit pills" which will spare those taking them an agonizing end.

The first half of the movie is largely focused on gradually revealing what's occurring and playing with the comedic disconnect between the objective horror of the situation and the restrained way its upper-class British characters are acting. For the most part, everyone spends the first part of the movie behaving as if it's a typical Christmas comedy about a dysfunctional group trying to survive the holidays before revealing no one's actually expecting to survive.

The aforementioned drama concerns a couple characters not being onboard with taking the government's word on the lack of survivability of the cloud. The most significant of whom is Knightley's character's oldest son, played by Roman Griffin Davis (the lead from Jojo Rabbit). He's more afraid of giving up than he is of the prospect of a painful death, while his parents don't think he's actually in a position to make that choice, since he's lived a relatively sheltered life.

Complicating matters is the fact the partner of one of their friends is pregnant, and - despite having no illusions as to what's in store - rejects the idea of acting in a way that will directly kill her baby. Eventually it comes out that she's not planning to take the pill, and the boy runs out and is exposed to the gas. He's found and brought home in a state of shock, which escalates into a series of convulsions. By the time the cloud's arrived in full force, the boy appears to be dead. The remaining members of the household take their pills (or in one case, a woman stabs her lover because she threw up her pill), and they die peacefully.

The next morning, in the movie's closing shot, the boy who appeared dead wakes up.

While this one didn't really work for me, there's no denying that writer/director Camille Griffin (who directed her son in this) swung for the fences here. The movie includes some fantastic moments, such as showing a father's frustration as his sons make increasingly unreasonable demands around the soda they're using to swallow their suicide pills. Even more than that, I really like the underlying idea of using a Christmas movie as a template for this kind of story. As I've said numerous times, the genre I most want to see explored further in holiday movies is science-fiction, and this does so in a way that's inherently different and fairly unique.

The problem is... well, really the problem is there are a lot of problems. Most of the characters just aren't all that interesting, and the movie's focus is fragmented between too many of them. The movie's thematic and emotional core is consolidated on Knightley and Davis's characters - we really don't need as many side stories wedged in. On top of all that, the tonal juggling act the movie's trying to pull off doesn't deliver the effect that's needed. The absurdist humor is fun when it lands, but there's not enough of it, and too much of what's here isn't consistently funny enough.

Still, there is a lot to like. Roman Griffin Davis gives a great performance - seriously, this kid is good. The movie also sells the weight of its holiday-centric catastrophe - a literal wave of death silencing the world as it sweeps over - effectively, despite budget limitations. In addition, it does a good job portraying the impossibility of the choice its characters are facing. The final shot ultimately comes down on the side of hope, but it isn't demonizing the rest of its characters for giving up in the face of such horror.

Which actually brings us around to what this is all about, a subject made somewhat thorny by the fact this was put into production in January of 2020 and released in December of 2021. My guess is that the catastrophe was largely intended as a loose parable for climate change, with asides acknowledging classism and xenophobia (one of the family's primary disputes concerns the fact that undocumented immigrants and the homeless weren't provided with pills, nor did the British government provide such a merciful solution to those in the Global South). In addition, I don't think it's a coincidence that the symptoms of the poison seem to resemble those of Ebola. In essence, the movie is challenging those who have given up on tackling the massive problems of the future, while also acknowledging such defeatism is an understandable coping mechanism in the face of such challenges.

At least that's my guess as far as what the script was supposed to be about. But between getting a green light and being released, there was a global pandemic which somewhat transforms how a lot of the subtext reads. Now, the government's insistence the cloud can't be survived feels like a reference to recommendations to take precautions against COVID, while the movie's reveal that the cure is worse than the disease comes off as antivax nonsense.

To be clear, I don't think any of that was intentional, however it's a little too easy to read those messages into to the story. Whether that's a significant impediment to your experience (or, God forbid, some kind of incentive) is going to come down to how you interact with media, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

I want more movies to approach the holidays the way this did, and - despite the movie's shortcomings - Griffin shows a lot of promise here as a writer and director. This was a very ambitious project that bit off more than it could chew, but frankly I'd rather that then a constant barrage of generic holiday flicks.

Comments