Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Mimi Cave
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Macfadyen, Jude Hill, Gael García Bernal, Rachel Sennott
As its moniker suggests, the town of Holland, Michigan was established by
Dutch immigrants. It's a history it maintains to this day with an annual
tulip festival and a giant windmill looming over the town. Holland is the
setting for, well, Holland, the latest disastrous movie to originate from the infamous "blacklist" of
unproduced screenplays. In director Mimi Cave's not so subtle hands,
Holland's relationship to its European cousin becomes a surreal backdrop for
what is otherwise a rather run of the (wind)mill thriller. Holland's Dutch
trimmings are simply garnish, existing in the hopes that they might garner
comparison to Fargo, but the exaggerated portrayal of Holland has more in common with the
offbeat suburbia of films like Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands and
Bob Balaban's
Parents.
It's a sign of Nicole Kidman's timeless quality that we find her
playing a role she might have played a full three decades ago. Kidman is
Nancy, a teacher at the local high school who lives what she considers an
idyllic life with her optician husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) and
their young son Harry (Jude Hill). But all is not rosy in this tulip
field. Nancy has grown suspicious of her husband's frequent work trips out
of town. Believing she's being cheated on, Nancy enlists fellow teacher Dave
(Gael Garcia Bernal) to help her gather evidence of Fred's suspected
infidelity. Ironically, Nancy begins having an affair of her own with
Dave.
Holland may have languished on the blacklist, having
originally meant to be filmed with Naomi Watts and Bryan Cranston in 2013,
but its mistimed pacing suggests it began life as a potential TV show. It's
not until the one hour 15 minutes mark that the plot finally begins to take
shape, with everything prior to that point playing with the languid pace of
a pilot episode. It's as if at that late point screenwriter
Andrew Sodorski suddenly realised he was writing a movie rather than
a TV pilot, and what might have been stretched out over eight episodes is
crammed into Holland's final 30 minutes, which play like a cack-handed knockoff of a certain 1955 French thriller. It's a lot like that version of the
Twin Peaks pilot that was released in Europe as a movie by
slapping an unconvincing climax onto the end of the pilot.
The film's tone is similarly misjudged. Take away the colourful backdrop of
its titular setting and the golly gee-ness of Kidman's
Stepford Wives-esque performance and it's a generic thriller. Had it been made in 2013
you imagine it would have been closer in tone to a Gillian Flynn adaptation,
but this 2025 version stinks of the influence of A24 with its desperate and
unconvincing quirkiness. If Holland was playing in a doctor's
waiting room with the sound off you'd likely presume it was a comedy, but
nothing is actually played for laughs, and it enters some very dark
territory following a certain reveal.
That reveal arrives so late that the film has no time left to explore its
implications. Too much time is spent detailing the titular town rather than
fleshing out Holland's main characters, all of whom are one-note caricatures: the smarmy,
controlling husband; the ditzy wife who suddenly realises her life is a
sham; and Dave, whose only notable feature is that he seems to be the only
person of colour in town. Subplots involving supporting characters like a
high school student with an odd vendetta against Dave and a babysitter (a
single scene cameo by Rachel Sennett) suspected of stealing one of
Nancy's earrings are introduced and left unresolved, another element that
makes me suspect this was meant to be a TV series rather than feature film.
Premiering on Prime Video, Holland is yet another movie made
by a streaming service that betrays a distinct lack of oversight and quality
control. Sadly, it seems the people now deciding what films get made
couldn't care less about quality and are content with content.
Holland is on Prime Video from
March 27th.
