Keira Knightley was “incredibly pregnant” the first time she read writer-director Camille Griffin’s script for the comedic holiday horror-drama “Silent Night,” and recalls finding the unusual tale of a Christmas Eve gathering the night of a coming apocalypse “absolutely, hysterically funny.”
She read it again months later — sleep deprived and with her six-week-old daughter in tow — and still found it hilarious.
But by the time production started, her daughter was five months old. Suddenly, the parental strife and absurdist life-or-death decisions peppering the script took on a very different light.
“I was like, this is not funny! What the fuck was I on? This is the opposite of funny!” she squeals in bafflement.
As a new parent herself, the questions the film poses about the lengths one is willing to go to to protect one’s children took on a new, unshakeable weight.
In “Silent Night,” Knightley’s character...
She read it again months later — sleep deprived and with her six-week-old daughter in tow — and still found it hilarious.
But by the time production started, her daughter was five months old. Suddenly, the parental strife and absurdist life-or-death decisions peppering the script took on a very different light.
“I was like, this is not funny! What the fuck was I on? This is the opposite of funny!” she squeals in bafflement.
As a new parent herself, the questions the film poses about the lengths one is willing to go to to protect one’s children took on a new, unshakeable weight.
In “Silent Night,” Knightley’s character...
- 12/23/2021
- by Rebecca Davis
- Variety Film + TV
The easiest way to make sure your child actors are up to swearing on-screen is casting your own. That’s exactly what first-time feature writer/director Camille Griffin does for her film Silent Night—and it’s with good reason. Art (Roman Griffin Davis) and twins Thomas (Gilby Griffin Davis) and Hardy (Hardy Griffin Davis) have made a pact with their parents (Keira Knightley’s Nell and Matthew Goode’s Simon) to say whatever comes to their mind without fear of punishment or retribution since they’re all going to die anyway. Rather than some hyperbolic, progressively laissez faire parenting tactic, however, this sentiment is fact. Everyone on Earth is literally going to die. Some already have. Some will soon. And Nell, Simon, and the boys will have their turn tomorrow. On Christmas day.
Grab the wine, steal some pudding, and prepare yourself for the most awkward holiday fun you...
Grab the wine, steal some pudding, and prepare yourself for the most awkward holiday fun you...
- 9/18/2021
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
‘Tis the season. Well almost. And perhaps that is why AMC+ and Rlje recently swooped in and took the new holiday-themed dramedy Silent Night off the market (domestically at least) before its Toronto International Film Festival premiere tonight. Who doesn’t love a good ‘ol Christmas movie, perhaps the most reliable genre for feel good feelings?
Well this one certainly is a twist on the tradition as it centers on a gathering of British upper crust family and friends as they settle down for their holiday dinner knowing it is going to be the last dinner of their lives. With a deadly cloud coming in to slowly make its way presumably across the world, it is now heading directly toward the impressive English estate of Simon(Matthew Goode) and wife Nell (Keira Knightley) who have invited a group of merry makers over for their final night on earth as the...
Well this one certainly is a twist on the tradition as it centers on a gathering of British upper crust family and friends as they settle down for their holiday dinner knowing it is going to be the last dinner of their lives. With a deadly cloud coming in to slowly make its way presumably across the world, it is now heading directly toward the impressive English estate of Simon(Matthew Goode) and wife Nell (Keira Knightley) who have invited a group of merry makers over for their final night on earth as the...
- 9/17/2021
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
For anyone who — toward the end of a long, loud, fractious familial gathering at Christmas — has ever fleetingly wished death on their nearest and dearest, “Silent Night” is an uncomfortable sort of wish-fulfilment exercise. Near the beginning of Camille Griffin’s ambitious, genre-melding debut feature, Keira Knightley’s stressed hostess announces that this year’s holiday is going to be “all about love and forgiveness”: the kind of thing people say every year, of course, though this time, the instruction has a sort of last-rites finality to it. For this will, it seems, be every guest’s last Christmas. A toxic cloud of lethal poison is sweeping the planet, and it’s set to hit Knightley’s luxe manor in the English countryside sometime past midnight on Dec. 26, so there’s nothing for the guests but to drink, feast and make merry as if there’s no tomorrow — because,...
- 9/17/2021
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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