Silent Night, the first feature length film from writer and director Camille Griffin, is a funny and terrifying morality tale about an environmental disaster rolling over the countryside on Christmas night.
With a terrific ensemble cast ostensibly lead by Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode, I thought the film belonged to young Art (Roman Griffin Davis). He was the voice of all the young activists fighting for the planet. Plus, he did an outstanding job in the part.
There are many layers to Silent Night. People arrive at a country home for Christmas together. The are family and friends with history, old grudges, and a desire for love and forgiveness in light of a pact they’ve made. We very slowly learn what the pact is.
It’s a bit of a spoiler to tell you the pact is they are all going to take a suicide pill (even their kids) just in time to avoid a horrible death from a cloud of poison gas that is on the way. The government has warned about the poison gas. They say it can’t be avoided. Everyone has been supplied with a pill so they can die with dignity.
Here’s who is in attendance. Nell (Keira Knightley) and Simon (Matthew Goode) are hosting the event. They have three sons: Art (Roman Griffin Davis), and the twins Thomas (Gilby Griffin Davis) and Hardy (Hardy Griffin Davis).
Sandra (Annabelle Wallis) and Tony (Rufus Jones) are there with their horrid daughter Kitty (Davida McKenzie). Newly pregnant Sophie (Lily-Rose Depp) is there with James (Sopé Dìrísù). Finally there’s the lesbian couple, Alex (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) and Bella (Lucy Punch).
In the long lead up to the moment when the pill popping is to take place there are presents, Christmas dinner, dance marathons, drinking, secret glances at government issued dire warnings on phones, and many personal revelations about the assembled party.
There are questions and doubts, mostly from the younger people. The adults all trust what the government has told them. There are ominous views of the coming gas clouds as they sweep across the country. There are confessions and revelations. It’s funny and scary at the same time.
There were a few continuity issues involving blood that caught my attention, but overall I found the film well done. I thought the twist at the end could have been given a few more beats.
The message I took away from the film was don’t trust the government. Or perhaps, don’t trust whatever authority figure you cherish. This film was made before COVID, but it spoke so strongly of how the Trumpers refuse vaccines and won’t wear masks while they die in disproportionate numbers. They are willing to die for their beliefs, even as their numbers dwindle because of it.
What Silent Night is asking you to think about is whether the government (or whoever you follow) actually tells the truth. It’s putting those questions to you from young Art, the family rebel, who quotes Greta Thunberg at the dinner table. The film is also suggesting young people will be the ones to save us.
You don’t often find Christmas horror, especially on the channels that run holiday movies 24/7 for a solid month. This film both makes you think and entertains you with its unique tale. It’s streaming on AMC+.
I’ll watch it if it comes to Netflix. So here is art imitating reality: I have been studying respiratory issues and specifically those caused by Corona viruses for over 40 years. I solved the Common Cold and was writing a book about it when I realized on January 15th at 2:13 pm that Covid-19 was more relevant and that I should be writing that book instead. To make a long story short, KILL THE CORONAVIRUS was listed for sale on amazon.com June 6, 2020. It remains the only document on planet earth that explains clearly how to defeat the pandemic. Not one person who has read the book has uttered or written a word against it. Yet, because I’m not a doctor, people think I’m pulling a scam. My neighbours would be pretty upset with me if that was the case since my truck is covered in graphics promoting it. Instead I get people chasing me off the highway to buy a copy.
Yet no government has talked about how to restore immune systems or the chemicals that are the basis for immunity of all life on earth. How to use those chemicals to defeat the virus in concert with vaccines, masks, social distancing and hand-washing is what the book is about. But in the process, you learn what common foods people eat that make them sitting ducks for Covid-19. That is what THE WHO and the world’s governments are trying to keep the public from finding out.
Of course that won’t work this time because this virus is well suited to take advantage of cheats.
Masks do work but are far from perfect. Hand-washing is effective but only in certain circumstances. Social distancing is most effective but pandemics are enabled by over-population of any species. So Covid-19 won’t end until civilization either collapses or we finally start using all of the tools at our disposal properly. At this point, I’d say the collapse of civilization as we know it is most likely.
When and if you read my book, you will have no trouble reaching the same conclusion.
So, here’s the thing: Having written the book and offered it to HEALTH CANADA, (they ignored it even though I sent them 3 copies) I watched my theories be vindicated by science one after the other. I also watched Covid-19 march around the world following the Western Diet which is the root issue upon which the virus can’t spread without and knowing beforehand where death was going to be worst.
The retirement home deaths could be called genocide because in my book I explained exactly how to prevent those deaths. Gum disease is the key to that disaster. The solution to it is in the book. It ain’t rocket science but it’s way beyond politicians and the medical sector.