Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Silent Night’ on AMC+, Last Call for Holiday Cheer Before the Apocalypse

Now streaming on AMC+, Silent Night stacks up a stellar cast for some holiday-slash-end-of-the-world hijinks. Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Annabelle Wallis, Lily-Rose Depp, Kirby Howell-Baptiste and JoJo Rabbit kid Roman Griffin Davis come together for some exchanging of gifts, a hearty meal, the inevitable extermination of all life on planet Earth and maybe some dancing if they’re not too full of ham and pudding. This light dark comedy is from writer-director Camille Griffin, mother of Roman Griffin Davis, and it sure seems to offer us an opportunity to simply have a wonderful Christmas apocalypse. Now let’s see if this crazy premise works.

SILENT NIGHT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: What’s that terrible Christmas sweater song? You know — the one you want to see destroyed forever? Well, it’s playing on the radio as cheery folk travel to a lovely home for a gathering of old friends for the holiday, and they’re all suffering through it. There’s narcissist Sandra (Wallis) and milquetoast Tony (Rufus Jones) and their high-maintenance daughter Kitty (Davida McKenzie). There’s oncologist James (Sope Dirisu) and his younger gee-eff Sophie (Depp). There’s goofy Bella (Lucy Punch) and her wife Alex (Howell-Baptiste). And waiting for them in a lovely almost-mansion are Nell (Knightley) and Simon (Goode), their precocious son Art (Roman Griffin Davis), and twin boys Thomas and Hardy (Gilby and Hardy Griffin Davis, Roman’s real-life siblings). Sprigs are on the pillows and the china is polished and everything is just so and pretty much perfect, with the possible exception of the poisonous cloud that’s engulfing the planet and murdering everything in its path, and will be here in this gorgeous slice of English countryside sometime soon after midnight.

Well, we don’t quite know the latter catastrophe yet, because the plot doles out a detail here and there, with a bit of reverse dramatic irony. There’s talk about the Queen’s address, probably from a bunker stocked with dog food for the corgis, and something about government-sanctioned suicide. Anyway, this group of individuals, adults in their 40s except for Sophie, which is a slight scandal, they’ve all been friends since high school or maybe college — doesn’t really matter, considering that they’re about to die — banters and chats with a bit of affectionate prickliness before sitting down for dinner. A truly awful grace occurs, because what the f—- do they have to be thankful for, then they begin eating, and the kids start blathering on about how they heard the poison cloud turns people’s guts to bloody mush. A poison cloud that’s basically Mad Mama Earth’s revenge on its inhabitants for treating it like shit for millennia.

But these people soldier on, through the ritual of presents for the children, a game of charades and the usual petty bickering and interpersonal grievances, although the latter are aired without the traditional passive-aggressiveness, which is replaced with brutal frankness, all things considered. A debate about all the considered things emerges, and it has the whiff of Covid convos: The British government, armed with scientific assertions that exactly zero forms of life will survive the toxic onslaught, has administered a pill called Exit, which will humanely, painlessly put a person down for good. That’s theoretically preferable to the horrible suffering a person will experience if they’re exposed to the diabolical hellcloud. But: “Do you believe the government?” Sandra asks Bella, who replies, “God no! They killed Diana!”

So not everyone is quite on board with the plan. The argument manifests most poignantly via young Art, who, precocious as all get-out, wrestles mightily with the existentialism of it all, points out that the batteries in his new Christmas gift will last longer than he will, and also refuses to take the pill. To him, opting for self-extermination feels like giving up the fight. This distresses his parents, who quite understandably can’t fathom the thought of their boy suffering — and besides, the last thing they all should see is each other, in a love pile on the bed, calmly drifting into eternal sleep, you know, in heavenly peace, like the song goes.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is Peter’s Friends (or This Christmas or Home for the Holidays or many other dysfunctional-Christmas-party movies) meets one of those asteroid’s-gonna-obliterate-us movies like Melancholia or Greenland and the like.

Performance Worth Watching: Truly exceptional child actors are a rare thing, and Roman Griffin Davis ably bears significant dramatic weight here.

Memorable Dialogue: Bella contemplates living The Road if she somehow manages to defy all the odds and survive: “I can’t DO postapocalyptic monochrome!”

Sex and Skin: None. TBDTF: Too Busy Dying To F—-.

Our Take: Well, it’s obvious this movie is all about TIDINGS OF COMFORT AND JOY. Camille Griffin has a firm grip on Silent Night’s visual presentation, and her talent-heavy cast is primed and ready for anything. But the tone of this thing is oddly mushy, blending blackened farce and emotional drama, neither of which truly catches fire. One moment it’s a bummer, the next it’s a howler. Griffin stirs in political and personal fodder, but they’re never quite fully integrated into a concise statement about life or death or coping or togetherness or the role and power of comedy in the face of tragedy. It’s an uneven mix, wilder in concept than execution.

The film has its strong moments. A sequence in which Goode begrudgingly spends some of his final moments of existence kowtowing to his kids’ petty demands is an uproarious depiction of parenting at its most exasperating. There’s some complexity in Knightley game-facing through holiday traditions, an attempt to maintain the status quo so nobody falls into despair. (Of course, she tends to fail.) But the overall arc of the film skews more depressing than hopeful, and the final shot muddies all that came before it, undermining any attempts to sift reason and truth from overheated emotions.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Bottom line, sometimes Silent Night works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Take it, leave it, but ultimately it’s a Debbie Downer.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream Silent Night on AMC+