Silent Night Ending Twist & Real Meaning Explained

Silent Night Ending Twist & Real Meaning Explained

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Silent Night is a Christmas horror-comedy with an outstanding cast and a huge twist. Here’s a breakdown of what happens to Art and what it all means.

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Silent Night Ending Twist & Real Meaning Explained

Warning: spoilers ahead for Silent Night

Despite having all the makings of a fun holiday movie with the perfect mix of family drama and Christmas carols, Silent Night’s ending twist turns the movie into something much darker. Directed by Camille Griffin, the apocalyptic Christmas movie features a brilliant ensemble of British actors (with the exception of American Lily-Rose Depp, who plays Catherine in Netflix’s The King) led by Kiera Knightley and Matthew Goode, but the real standout is the director’s son, young actor Roman Griffin Davis, in the role of Art. It is Griffin Davis’s Art that offers a much deeper meaning to the otherwise strange yet entertaining Silent Night during the film’s finale.

Set in what appears to be present-day England, the film begins with the coming together of family and friends at the country home of Nell, Simon, Art, and his twin brothers Hardy and Thomas (who are played by Roman Griffin Davis’ real-life brothers Hardy and Gilby). A familiar mix of personalities descends on the house (as is a tradition in ensemble holiday tales): The abrasive, brutally honest Bella (played by Lucy Punch from the Gossip Girl reboot) and her partner Alex; the Diva, Sandra, and her boring husband Tony (along with their cartoonishly overstated brat daughter Kitty who is responsible for the drama in the younger set); and the heartthrob character, James, with his outsider girlfriend Sophie. As the holiday-movie banter and fiascos ensue, an ominous secret is revealed: the world is coming to an end and everyone plans to take a government-issued “exit pill” to avoid a torturous death by poison gas. The only dissenters are Sophie (Lily-Rose Depp), who has recently found out she is pregnant, and Art, who voices his profanity-peppered doubt loudly throughout the film.

As the group’s final night on earth comes to an end and the toxic gas threatens to envelop the house, Art makes a stand and his actions leave him the only one left alive. It is in Silent Night’s final moment when Art (Jojo Rabbit’s Roman Griffin Davis) wakes to a bed full of his dead family, a house full of his dead friends, and a world of presumably limited survivors, that the film truly embraces and reveals its horror roots eradicating any hopes of a happy holiday ending. In the end, Art is vindicated and alive, but alone, highlighting Silent Night’s twist ending’s complex and nuanced message.

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Silent Night’s Christmas Title is About More Than Christmas

Silent Night Ending Twist & Real Meaning Explained

While the film’s title is an obvious play on the traditional Christmas carol, there is more to Silent Night’s title than a clever wink at the holiday. As the characters submit to their fears and take their “exit pills,” a common symptom emerges: They lose their ability to speak. Bella tries to say something to Alex (played by Kirby Howell-Baptiste who played Anita in Disney’s 101 Dalmatians prequel, Cruella) after stabbing her but Bella finds she has no voice before dropping to the floor in a spoof-like death. Young Kitty loses her voice as well and uses her very creepy doll to tell her dead father she loves him before finally, silently, embracing her mother. Silent Night ends with everyone mutely going to their death and Art waking to a quiet morning after a silent night. This highlights how the Silent Night title is as much a narrative clue as it is a pun.

What Is The Gas In Silent Night?

Silent Night Ending Twist & Real Meaning Explained

The gas in Silent Night is never named and is described only in its appearance and effect, with many of its elements leaning to the supernatural. Appearing first as small dust clouds and then tornados, the poisonous gas arrives in something of a superstorm that inexplicably involves lightning, thunder, and strong wind. Additionally, though Art’s mother, Nell (Love Actually’s Kiera Knightley), describes the poison as airborne and everyone in Silent Night refers to it as a gas, the water that flows when Alex turns on the tap near the end of the film is brown and has a foul odor lending to the idea that the water is tainted as well.

In effect, the gas attacks the nervous system like that of other known deadly gases like Sarin. The symptoms of exposure to Sarin (via Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) include muscle jerks, convulsions, loss of consciousness, paralysis, and respiratory failure. Immediately after Art is exposed to a toxic dust cloud, in Silent Night, he appears unaffected by the poison (or any symptoms are hidden by the trauma he suffers seeing the dead family in the car). Alone in his room, after his father, Simon (played by Matthew Goode who will be joining the Kingsman franchise with the upcoming The King’s Man), believes Art is safe in bed, Art begins to seize and gasp for air. Later, as his mother cradles him on the bed, Art suffers the paralysis associated with nerve-affecting poisons like Sarin, and his mother, Nell, believes him simply subdued. When she finally releases him, it is his limp body along with blood from his nose and eyes that leads her and the family to believe Art is dead (though, ridiculously, no one check’s his pulse) and they all rush to pop their pills. However, whereas Art’s symptoms are delayed in Silent Night, Sarin’s effects are immediate, happening within the first moments after exposure. Furthermore, with other poisons that affect the nervous system, the victim typically loses control of their bodily functions, something that was absent from Art’s struggle.

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Another possibility is a version of sulfur mustard similar to the hydrogen-corrupted mustard gas conceptualized in 2017’s Wonder Woman, as the CDC points out (via Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) that “sulfur mustard vapor can be carried long distances by wind.” Symptoms of exposure include agitation of the body’s mucous membranes which would explain Art’s bloody eyes and nose. Additionally, like Sarin, sulfur mustard affects the respiratory tract but unlike Sarin, sulfur mustard is not a nerve agent and would not cause the seizures Art experiences in Silent Night. Also, while Sarin is likely to cause death, sulfur mustard is unlikely to kill someone possibly explaining why Art survives. Interestingly, water can be contaminated by both Sarin and Sulphur mustard and, though Sarin is odorless and colorless, Sulphur mustard can make water can appear yellow or brown and smell like onions, garlic, or mustard explaining the earlier scene with Alex.

Silent Night Is Not Really A Movie About Christmas… Or The End Of The World

Among the 2021 December theater releases, Silent Night presents as a Christmas movie with the feel-good comedy associated with the genre. Likewise, the film delivers horror at the end when Art wakes to his dead family and becomes a survivor in a world full of “exit pill” consumers. Silent Night, however, is more than a holiday-horror-comedy.

Throughout Silent Night, Art spouts questions about if the scientists could be wrong and if the government could be misleading people. Through the other characters’ arguments about suffering and pain, Art remains unconvinced, but their fears are revealed and they become examples of how fear-mongering and fake news can spread in today’s culture. When Art is the only one left alive, his survival lends to the underlying themes throughout Silent Night that the government is wrong, science is wrong, the news is misleading, and that fear and the lack of courage are the greatest threat to humanity.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/silent-night-movie-ending-explained-art-twist-meaning/

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