If there's one thing we Brits can do it's exploit our civility and manners for entertainment purposes. And we have used that for many different movies, from classic murder mysteries to dark comedies, from the sci-fi horror of something like Prey (Norman J. Warren, 1977) to the unfolding dinner party with a big secret in Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948). This material has been mined by many other countries throughout the decades of cinema, but I like to think that they all stem from observations of British people in their home environment.
Silent Night, the first feature from writer-director Camille Griffin (who also casts all three of her sons in roles of varying importance), shows a group of seemingly well-to-do British people gathering at an isolated home for an evening of dining, drinking, conversation, and probably more drinking. It's a dinner party with a difference, that difference being the looming end of the world.
While this is an interesting premise for a movie, and could have been a showpiece for any actor, Griffin stumbles due to a lack of tonal focus or consistency. She may have wanted to make something that weaves from comedy to drama to horror, but every one of the better moments just makes you wonder how many other ways the film could have played out in a much more satisfying way.
The main fault lies with Griffin’s script, especially when she doesn’t give anyone the kind of razor-sharp dialogue that the film craves. None of the main characters have the steel required to lift it up to a level of greatness. If this had been made fifty years ago with a main role for Bette Davis, THEN you have something closer to greatness.
Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode are the host couple, both doing well with what they are given (mainly being polite and attempting to put a brave face on things), and their three children (the characters played by Griffin’s children) include another star turn from Roman Griffin Davis, playing the most important person in the film. Lucy Punch, Annabelle Wallis, Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Lily-Rose Depp play the women, all with various approaches to their impending fates, and Sope Dirisu and Rufus Jones are the two male guests, supporting their partners as they deal with some unfinished business.
Things step up a notch in the third act, and the very end features a great little “punchline”, but the end result is more of an interesting, incomplete, almost-ran than an outright winner.
6/10
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Somehow I missed your write-up the first time around, which is fine considering I just revisited it for its Blu-ray release and it's fresh in my head. I totally agree with your assessment that some sharper, more memorable dialogue would have elevated this to the level to which it clearly aspires. There's a lot to like, and there's plenty of variety within the cast of characters - it just feels like it could have been... more.
ReplyDeleteNow, with regard to the final "punchline," that was a big stumble for me, and I wish that Griffin had made almost any other choice (there are four, count 'em, four alternate endings on the disc, all of which are preferable in my mind) because it took what had been a fantastic-but-still-realistic scenario and tossed it into pure fantasy in the last frame. It became another movie in that instant, turning everything that had gone before into prologue instead of its own story in its own right.
I also understand that may in fact have been the movie that many people were hoping it would become anyway, so I may be the outlier here. It sparked conversation betwixt the femalien and I for hours afterwards, so that's not the worst thing a film can do.
Happy Holidays!
Indeed, a good bit to discuss after it's all over, making it better than many other films we have watched over the years.
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