Holland Review: Nicole Kidman Shines, But This So-Called Thriller Barely Hits Home

There’s something wrong with Holland, the new movie from Mimi Cave, marking her long-awaited second feature since her acclaimed 2022 debut in Fresh. The title in question refers to the idyllic Dutch-influenced city in Michigan, a home sweet home for Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman). She’s a teacher who leads a picture-perfect life in a beautiful suburban home with a loving optometrist-husband, Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) and has a son named Harry (Jude Hill).

A story like this taking place in such a backdrop usually means one thing: it’s always too good to be true because there’s something ugly buried beneath all the sunshine-and-rainbows facade. Right from the get-go, Nancy already has a problem after she discovers one of her pearl earrings has disappeared. She suspects it could be her son’s tutor (Rachel Sennott), but her missing earring is just part of the larger issue. The other part? She begins to suspect her husband is having an affair and wonders if Fred is frequently going out of town for so-called conferences are simply excuses.

So, is her husband lying to her, or is she just overthinking? Either way, she told this to her close colleague, Dave (Gael García Bernal) and wants his help to investigate whether Fred is hiding something from her. And that means breaking into Fred’s clinic to see if there’s any evidence, and while they are at it, the two gradually have feelings for each other.

Here is where the movie starts to go wrong, as mentioned earlier. The problem with Andrew Sodroski’s screenplay lies in his story taking its sweet time getting to the point. Holland is the kind of movie that tries to encompass everything until it neglects its central mystery. That mystery in question would be Fred’s may-or-may-be-not hiding something from his wife. The bulk of the movie focuses more on Nancy and Fred’s unlikely affair, which triggers the former’s confusion and a sense of guilt. This, in turn, makes the mystery feel like an afterthought and by the time it comes to the eventual reveal, it’s just glossed over in the utmost perfunctory way possible with an underwhelming third act.

It doesn’t help either when other plot threads like Nancy’s missing earring and her bizarre dream sequence at one point are all incorporated as if just to fill in the blanks. In the meantime, Nancy and Dave’s investigation stretches too long to piece everything together. That’s a pity because Nicole Kidman, who also served as one of the producers, fits perfectly like a glove for the role of a housewife with a seemingly blissful life, echoing something she has already done in The Stepford Wives and HBO’s Big Little Lies. She pairs well with Matthew Macfadyen and Gael García Bernal, where both actors deliver equally competent supporting performances as Fred and Dave.

Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, who previously lensed Fresh and also Ari Aster’s movies, captures the idiosyncratic feel and look of an otherwise immaculate suburbia of Holland, Michigan’s setting dominated by tulips and windmills, despite most of them being shot in Tennessee. But as much as I enjoy the performances from the aforementioned three actors along with the movie’s distinct visual aesthetics, it’s hard to forgive Cave’s haphazard way of directing Sodroski’s already heavy-handed screenplay. Ironically, Sodroski’s Holland — then known as Holland, Michigan — made it to the top as 2013’s favourite unproduced Black List screenplays.

Unfortunately, whatever went on behind the scenes ever since his screenplay was finally picked up years later and developed into a feature under the direction of Mimi Cave, the result is rather a disappointment.

Holland is currently streaming on Prime Video.