The imminent poison is said to cause a prolonged and painful death upon exposure the government is instead prescribing suicide pills to the general public. It’s only midway through dinner that the subject everyone has been strenuously avoiding is unavoidably raised, and “Silent Night” finally reveals its hand as a last-night-on-earth fantasy, like Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” as reconceived by Richard Curtis. Family friends arrive, Prosecco is popped, the sniping begins. For the film’s opening 20 minutes, however, it’s all standard-issue Christmas fuss, complete with Michael Bublé puttering away cheerfully on the soundtrack: Nell frets over not having enough potatoes, her eldest son Art (“Jojo Rabbit” star Roman Griffin Davis, the director’s son) cuts his finger while helping out with the carrots, while his younger twin brothers (Hardy and Gilby Griffin Davis, extending the family affair) just won’t get ready. Streaming service AMC Plus and RLJE Films have already picked up “Silent Night” for a day-and-date release in December, when it’ll serve its purpose as a feel-bad seasonal counter-programming option - though it’s neither funny nor haunting enough to become a holiday staple.Īt the very least, “Silent Night” expands Knightley’s Christmas-movie legacy beyond the most inadvertently creepy strand of “Love Actually.” Her likable, fittingly flustered performance as a wife and mother immersing herself in the usual pressures of Christmas hosting - if only to postpone thoughts of more extraordinary concerns brewing outside - holds this uneven enterprise together in much the same way her character Nell keeps her game face on as her party lurches into episodes of panic, terror and heated ethical debate. Indeed, her debut is most effective when it dispenses with the “Peter’s Friends”-style dramatics - between a group of one-dimensional characters who never really convince as people who would willingly hang out together - and veers into darker, horror-adjacent terrain, toward a twist that is at once tingly and a tad predictable. Perhaps there’s some truth to its suggestion that the world will end with more of a whimper than a bang, but one can’t help thinking that some of the squabbling drama Griffin has cooked up here is unequal to the occasion. That sets the stage for some pretty wild end-of-days action, but “Silent Night” never fully ramps up to it.
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