HOLLAND (2024)
Starring Nicole Kidman, Gael García Bernal, Matthew Macfadyen, Jude Hill, Jeff Pope, Isaac Krasner, Lennon Parham, Rachel Sennott, Chris Witaske, River Brooks, Jens Frederiksen, Bill Russell, Andrew Sodroski, Jacob Moran, Irene Dewyn, Jonathon Pawlowski, Sue Rock, Heather Olsen, Bethany DeZelle, Richmond Lam, Justin Nathaniel Kistler and Nicole Lynne McGee.
Screenplay by Andrew Sodorski.
Directed by Mimi Cave.
Distributed by Amazon Prime Video. 108 minutes. Rated R.
There is something quite impressive about Nicole Kidman’s work ethic. She is constantly coming out with new projects, both in starring and supporting roles, often taking chances with offbeat and experimental low-budget movies (and TV series).
The problem with this unmitigated drive to perform is that sometimes she has to take questionable projects like Holland.
Kidman plays Nancy Vandergroot, a long-married teacher in Holland, Michigan, a town which takes its name with deadly seriousness, seeming like a mini version of the country for which it is named. (There are lots of clogs, windmills, tulips, Volendam hats and Dutch girls everywhere.)
Nancy is an oddly surreal and complex character – it is most like Kidman’s performance in the horrible remake of The Stepford Wives. Through a bunch of slightly obscure clues, Nancy starts to suspect that her all-American optometrist husband (Matthew Macfadyen) may be having an affair. This may be a bigger concern for the audience if Nancy herself weren’t contemplating fooling around with a fellow teacher (Gael Garcia Bernal).
Then it starts to occur to her that maybe he was not having an affair, perhaps he is a serial killer. She actually finds potential proof of this incredibly easily, going into the library microfilm room with no names and dates and finding a series of killings.
Oh, yeah, this film takes place sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s. It is a surreal world of microfilm, land lines, flip phones and Microsoft 95. There is no particular reason for this story to be a period piece, but here we are.
Holland is an odd merging of the surreal, the mundane and some not all that scary horror. It’s sort of like the old, mostly forgotten Stephen King movie A Good Marriage with Joan Allen and Anthony LaPaglia – but strangely played for broad laughs. They also seem to be giving homey dialogue and situations with a background a la Fargo. The problem is, Holland is nowhere near as good a film as Fargo, and it isn’t even as decent as the flawed A Good Marriage.
In fairness, Kidman gives it her all, portraying Nancy in a strangely complex way for such a surface-level character, however she is sort of marooned by the script and lack of direction. The normally terrific Bernal is also given nearly nothing to do, making his character a conduit of Nancy’s neuroses, not so much a living, thinking being. However, Macfadyen (from Succession) is properly chilling as the strait-laced doctor with some huge secrets.
Holland is obviously trying to make some much larger points about complacency and conforming in its kitschy diorama of a town. Unfortunately, the film is too complacent and conformant to actually flesh out these concepts. Instead, it relies too much on a not overly suspenseful thriller concept, the soggy threat of extramarital affairs and mocking the town in general for being so lame.
When a movie has too many ideas and none of them really work, somebody is going to have to kick up their clogs and try harder. Better yet, maybe you should just go on YouTube and watch a video about the real Holland, Michigan. It seems like it may be a rather strange place, but I doubt that it is as strange as the movie named after the town.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 27, 2025.
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