Silent Night (2021) | Film Review

Every lead up to winter, holiday films arrive en masse to theaters and streaming services alike, wrapped in saccharine-laced cheese, as clichés attack other clichés and good tidings swell the screen. For the darker of hearts, like mine, intermittently tossed in with these rote collections are the sly gems aiming to take a starker dissection of the holidays. Even still, on occasion, you will find a film like Silent Night, which also leaves you assessing your own mortality.

Silent Night opens as many other holiday films, with a gathering of rich friends and family at an overly priced country home in the middle of nowhere to celebrate. A gaggle of talented actors emerge, headlined by Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode as their hosts, Nell and Simon. Also joining in on the couple’s fun are Nell’s exhaustingly snobbish sister Sandra (Annabelle Wallis, who has seemingly been everywhere this year) and her placating husband Tony (Rufus Jones), the dagger-tongued wit of Bella (Lucy Punch) and her girlfriend Alex (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), medical professional James (Sope Dirisu) and his much-younger than everyone else girlfriend Sophie (Lily-Rose Depp). Of course there are also children present, including the director Camille Griffin’s own boys cast as Nell’s kids, headlined by the endlessly talented Roman Griffin Davis (Jojo Rabbit) as Art.

What tweaks the concept is – though there are secrets and misunderstandings aplenty – this film is not planning on a brightly-lit ending with a massive red bow attached. Nell and friends are gathering to face an uncertain future, one where a global crisis is looming over their heads, and they have only one last night to share. The government has introduced a solution for all that will afford you the option of a calm, painless death, or face the well-documented horror of an agonizing certain death looming over the horizon.

Camille Griffin wrote and directed Silent Night, and what I enjoyed most about her film is that it leaves no easy answers about the overarching questions posed. Instead, discussions and debates are had between friends and families that seem genuine and on-point. Due to obvious recent events, it is an idea that has crept up in the minds of millions for the past two years (production began before the current pandemic, so the timeliness is solely coincidental), and her script allows those discussions to evolve and prosper organically. Art, in particular, poses many insightful points that only a child could, as he does not suffer a lifetime of being beaten down by a rigged system and holds on to that beacon of hope and compassion so many of us easily lose in desperate times.

While the entire cast holds their own, and each character has their own personal stake on their perceived outcome, Keira Knightley truly elevates the game. As a mother who believes in her soul that she is making the soundest decisions for her family based on all of the evidence afforded to her, the anguish hidden behind her eyes is palpable. There is an understated fierceness to her performance that emerges as the layers are peeled back, and as Art especially becomes more-and-more erratic while the night progresses. It is a role from the accomplished actress I have not seen in her previous work, and Keira puts on a master class of a performance as Nell wrestles with the most impossible of choices. Simply told, it’s an electric ensemble, but Nell and Art’s relationship is the film’s driving force.

Camille Griffin’s cinematic canvas and camera work is rather muted, as the majority of the film takes place inside a country estate, but this is not a disaster film meant to pop off the screen in an assembly of assorted special effects. Griffin’s script is thought-provoking and meditative, meant to engage the audience on a cerebral and emotional level, leading us to leave her world pondering the biggest question posed throughout: what would you do?

In a world rife with conflict and disparaging viewpoints, it is a question worth asking. And in a medium consumed by bombastic images all attempting to outdo each other in sheer excess, it felt warm and inviting to spend a bit of relaxing holiday time with Nell and friends contemplating the end of the world. What could be more Christmassy than that?

Follow our further discussion on Silent Night via this episode of The Hollywood Outsider podcast: