Despite having all the makings of a fun holiday movie with the perfect mix of family drama and Christmas carols, Silent Night‘s ending explained that things are much darker. 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. A familiar mix of personalities arrives at the house and 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.

Directed by Camille Griffin, the apocalyptic Christmas movie features a brilliant ensemble of British actors, 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. Griffin Davis’s Art offers a much deeper meaning to the otherwise strange yet entertaining Silent Night during the film’s finale. The only dissenters are Sophie, who has recently found out she is pregnant, and Art. 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.

Silent Night’s Christmas тιтle is About More Than Christmas

Though It Does Play On A Classic Song

The film’s тιтle is an obvious play on the traditional Christmas carol. However, there is more to Silent Night’s тιтle than 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 after stabbing her but finds she has no voice before dropping to the floor. Young Kitty loses her voice and uses her doll to tell her ᴅᴇᴀᴅ 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, as much a narrative clue as it is a pun.

What Is The Gas In Silent Night?

It Never Gets An Official Name

The gas in the Christmas horror movie Silent Night is never named and is described only in its appearance and effect, with many of its elements leaning toward the supernatural.

Appearing first as small dust clouds and then as tornadoes, the poisonous gas arrives in something of a superstorm that involves lightning, thunder, and strong winds. Additionally, Art’s mother, Nell, 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 also tainted.

In effect, the gas attacks the nervous system like other known ᴅᴇᴀᴅly gases. 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 ᴅᴇᴀᴅ family in the car). Alone in his room, after his father, Simon 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 ᴀssociated 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 ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, though no one checks his pulse and they all rush to take their suicide 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 bodily functions, something that was absent from Art’s struggle.

Another possibility is a version of sulfur mustard similar to the hydrogen-corrupted mustard gas conceptualized in 2017’s Wonder Woman. 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 does 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 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

That’s Part Of What Makes It So Unique

Camille Griffin’s Silent Night presents itself as a Christmas movie with the feel-good comedy ᴀssociated with the genre. Likewise, the film delivers horror at the end when Art wakes up his ᴅᴇᴀᴅ 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 whether 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 fearmongering 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 can be wrong, the news is misleading, and fear and the lack of courage are the greatest threats to humanity.

How Silent Night’s Ending Was Received

Critics Were Mixed On The Movie

Reviews of Silent Night were mixed from critics around the world when the movie originally landed in theaters. That is true of the response to the movie’s ending as well. Almost universally praised are the performances of the cast, specifically Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and Roman Griffin Davis. Critics are split on whether or not the movie effectively tells its story or nails its ending.

The London Evening Standard calls Davis’ comedic timing “delightful,” for example, but also goes on to say that the movie’s climax “is silent but ᴅᴇᴀᴅly and leaves a bad smell.” The Chicago Sun Times, on the other hand, has more praise for the movie, explaining that the movie “takes some gruesome and wickedly subversive turns as the clock approaches midnight, and we’re left thinking it’s a bloody shame we didn’t meet this bunch earlier.”

The AV Club also notes that the characters being so unlikable for so much of the movie detracts from the enjoyment of the picture. They also note that it very much speaks to the audience of 2021 who would have been in the height of a global pandemic, that the movie “capture[s] the very 2021 experience of arguing with vaccine skeptics: the same battle, again and again, with diminishing returns and an erosion of empathy.” For some, that reminder of their reality likely did not sit well.

These conflicting viewpoints about Silent Night are exactly the sentiments audiences will find across all the critical ᴀssessments of the movie, leaving them to make up their mind after they see the ending play out for themselves.