'Silent Night': Keira Knightley & Co. Blend The Holiday Film With The End Of The World Genre [TIFF Review]

Writer-director Camille Griffin’s debut feature film “Silent Night” effectively blends two seemingly disparate genres — holiday films and impending apocalyptic cinema. Both high-pressure situations that get you thinking about what really matters, Griffin’s film navigates difficult family and friend dynamics with mordant humor as they face the end of the world together on Christmas Eve. While the film works best when it’s satirizing ensemble holiday films a la “Love Actually,” it’s not afraid to go bleak as impending doom creeps ever closer. The tonal shifts are a bit shaky, but her strong cast holds the film together with their chemistry and deft delivery of Griffin’s incisive dialogue.

The strong ensemble cast includes Annabelle Wallis as Nell’s classist, self-absorbed sister Sandra whose fraught relationship with her daughter Kitty (Davida McKenzie, serving major Veruca Salt vibes) adds depth to what could have been a one-note character. Kirby Howell-Baptiste (“Queenpins,” “The Good Place”) is delightful as Alex, whose girlfriend Bella (Lucy Punch, “Bad Teacher”) has a complicated past with many of the party’s attendees, giving an outsider’s view on the deeply-rooted power dynamics within this group. Also adding an outsider’s view, not just on the group’s dynamics, but also their bleak after-dinner plans, is Lily-Rose Depp’s Sophie, the young girlfriend of James (Ṣọpé Dìrísù). As a doctor, not only has James seen the cataclysmic event from a different perspective, he and Sophie’s relationship give them a distinct point of view on the night’s event that has an unexpected impact on Art.

While the film’s ambitions to tackle hard subjects with humor are admirable, Griffin’s attempt to infuse the film with commentary on class, economic disparity and racism fall a bit short of their aim. It’s all well and good to discuss these topics, but in the end, the film is still focused on these upper-middle-class, mostly white characters. However, there is one scene that does work, as Sandra recalls how James was “so African” when he first arrived when they were kids, he “talked like Mowgli.” It’s a pitch-black scene that works due to Wallis’ fearless line delivery and Dìrísù and Howell-Baptiste’s strong reactionary work.

By including family, friends, significant others, and children into the holiday party, Griffin explores changing generational dynamics, asking viewers to think about their own relationships to others and how they change depending on who they are with and their history. In particular, with the inclusion of children, there is a rich examination of how parents often fail their children in the guise of protecting them. How the selfish impulses of protecting your own kin first often lead to a neglect of others, that can actually have a global impact.

The film begins as Nell (a wonderfully beleaguered Keira Knightley) prepares her spacious country home for a large Christmas party while her husband Simon (a fragile Matthew Goode) mess with their chickens outside and their children Art, Hardy, and Thomas (Griffin’s real-life sons Roman, “Jojo Rabbit” and twins Gilby and Hardy Griffin Davis) struggle to finish getting dressed without fighting. As family and friends arrive, it’s slowly revealed through minute details that food supplies are running low, and something big has happened in the outside world. Griffin wisely teases out the truth in fits and starts through dialogue that divulges just how serious the situation really is, allowing the audience to care for this group of misfits before the big reveal.

Probably the strongest aspect of the film is the use of a new — and incredibly cheesy — Christmas song sung by Mr. Christmas himself, Michael Bublé. Written by Lorne Balfe, Gary Barlow, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, and Michael Bublé, “Christmas Sweater” is about as saccharin as a dozen candy canes. First used in the opening sequence as we meet all the characters on their drive into the estate, the song slowly takes on a sinister quality as Griffin employs it through increasingly bleak circumstances until the film and song go full horror.

Highly ambitious, dark as midnight, and often hilarious, Griffin’s debut film “Silent Night” doesn’t always work, but her insightful look at the inherent selfishness of humanity and our absurd need to cling to hope no matter what is spot on. If you need your holiday films to be warm and fuzzy like an ugly Christmas sweater, you might want to look elsewhere, but for those who like their holiday films as dark and icy as a blizzard, this might be the film for you. [C]

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