The holidays can be a stressful time for anyone, but what if you knew the world was ending after Christmas Day? Would that make things unbearably worse, or would it take some of the pressure off? In the new holiday/apocalypse movie Silent Night, the answer seems to be a bit of both.
Produced by Kingsmen’s Matthew Vaughn and directed by Camille Griffin, Silent Night “follows parents Nell (Keira Knightley) and Simon (Matthew Goode) who have invited their closest friends to join their family for Christmas dinner at their idyllic home in the English countryside. As the group comes together, it feels like old times — but behind all of the laughter and merriment, something is not quite right. The world outside is facing impending doom, and no amount of gifts, games, or Prosecco can make mankind’s imminent destruction go away. Surviving the holidays just got a lot more complicated.”
The trailer sells it significantly better, I think:
In terms of dark comedy, this is pretty pitch black, given that even the children are told they’ll be dead by the morning, and the end of the trailer clearly shows there’s plenty of drama in between the potato-rationing jokes. Still, the British do “keep calm and carry on even in the face of armageddon” humour exceedingly well, and this really is an amazing cast which includes Knightley, A Discovery of Witches’ Matthew Goode, Jojo Rabbit star Roman Griffin Davis, Malignant’s Annabelle Wallis, The King’s Lily-Rose Depp, Black Mirror: San Junipero’s Ṣọpé Dìrísù, The Good Place’s Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Into the Woods’ Lucy Punch, Rufus Jones, Trudie Styler, and more. I wouldn’t call them a “killer” cast, though, just because that’s a lazy pun for a movie about people dying to make. I have some standards.
Silent Night will premiere in theatres and on-demand exclusively on AMC+ on Friday, December 3.
Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.