It takes something pretty major to strip away the artifice of the holidays…

Now on Blu-Ray, Silent Night is a deft look at our own mortality during the one time of the year we simply are trying to ride out and be done with….Christmas dinner with family and friends.

It’s a cozy house in the English countryside. The tree has been lovingly decorated. A grand feast is being prepared. Over the sound system, Michael Bublé croons about holiday sweaters. Nell (Keira Knightley), Simon (Matthew Goode), and their boy Art (Roman Griffin Davis) are ready to welcome friends and family for what promises to be a perfect Christmas gathering. Perfect except for one thing: everyone is going to die.

The dark comedy gets taken to a different level here with Silent Night as the polite little white lies (and the whoppers) all get stripped away in the face of the end of the world as the acceptable social interactions we have fall away for the cold honest truth of human nature itself.

Writer/director Camille Griffin has crafted and distinctly unique piece of British horror here with this film.  It has the style and class that we are accustomed to, but there’s also a little bit of grace and dignity with it all as well.  As the narrative tackles issues of pain, death and dying it really gives us some perspective on how as a species we are less afraid of the concept of dying then we are of pain and suffering.

There’s real social commentary in this film which is balanced with some distinctly British satire throughout.  It’s taking the piss out of who slept with who back in college and giving us a real discussion on life that is rarely ever had.  Faced with certain death, where does free will factor in?  Should we follow along with family and friends who want to avoid suffering, or do we want to fight on and embrace our will to live.

Rarely do horror movies get this existential and honest with the issues around life and death.  It hammers us like a shovel to the face.  The terror is real, but the selfish nature of humanity in the face of it runs throughout the human psyche until the very end.  When we are truly faced with it, we’re obviously terrified by it to the point of pure irrationality that drives us nuts.  It’s a premise that could have easily gone by the wayside if not for some genuinely excellent performances throughout.

Keira Knightley has always been adapt at running the gamut of emotions and does so incredibly well here as she tries to give her family one last evening of joy before the mysterious cloud of gas comes to kill them all.  With the likes of Matthew Goode, Annabelle Wallis, Lucy Punch, Rufus Jones and others jumping in and out of the narrative we see people trying to make peace with one final hurrah before they end it all.  Camille Griffin masterfully makes all feel effortless as we empathize with these people some of whom we were laughing at just minutes earlier.

The real masterful performances here in this movie come from young Roman Griffin Davis (who you might remember from JoJo Rabbit) as a young man self-aware enough to not want to give up on life and Lily-Rose Depp who doesn’t want to kill her unborn baby.

Picture and sound quality on the Blu-Ray is pretty first rate and the special features include deleted and extended scenes as well as alternate endings.

At the end of the day, Silent Night is next level perverse because it’s the kind of horror movie that is actually making a statement on how we behave as human beings as it reminds us that sometimes the easy solution….might not actually be the right one, no matter how well intentioned we think it might be.