Holland Review: A Disappointment of Epic Proportions

In this Prime Video mystery-thriller film, Nancy Vandergroot lives in the affluent and dreamy Holland, a place where everything seems to go right. However, when she stumbles upon her husband’s double life one day, further digging brings out unspeakable and disturbing facts that leave her carefully-constructed world shattered.

The film has a runtime of 108 minutes.

Holland Review

Nicole Kidman stars as a doting housewife in a small Midwestern town in Mimi Cave’s unsettling thriller Holland, where she learns a shocking truth about her husband that she couldn’t even fathom. The film starts off rather uncomfortably and full of promise, with miniature figurines of their town depicting the humdrum of normal suburban life. Miniatures entering the chat is always a scary notion these days, thanks to Hereditary, but this Prime Video film goes off in a direction that feels annoyingly half-baked and extremely boring.

Nicole Kidman is a very entertaining and charming housewife in Holland, although a bit troubled, who promises intrigue around every corner and is an unpredictable thriller that never really comes around. The film’s storyline promises a lot in the first half, but somehow never really gets to the point. It transforms into a noir-style thriller after a while, but never leaves an impact, choosing instead to go round and round with this affair angle that is just so annoying and, frankly, boring.

I think that’s probably the film’s biggest problem — it’s just so boring. Although it delivers a decent twist, it’s a little too late and leaves no impact because by that time, you will find yourself checked out. There’s a ton of conversation that brings forth Nancy’s loneliness and lack of identity in her home and how she feels free when she is with Dave, but it just feels like it’s delaying the twist for some reason. Sure, you want to learn who Nancy and Dave are, but you find yourself searching for the mystery that the film promises and delivers too late.

The mystery does finally open up in the latter half of the film, bringing forth a shocking truth that doesn’t turn out to be too shocking for hardened fans of the mystery genre. It’s an expected and clichéd turn of events, and I think I found myself thoroughly annoyed that I was made to wait till the end for the runtime to pick up, only for it to be just vanilla stuff. I think that’s the problem — it promises something deeper, more cerebral, and the payoff is anything but that. Its unsatisfying ending and overall boring path to it add nothing to anything, much like the film’s premise.

The performances are on point, though. I enjoyed watching Kidman as Nancy — she’s both paranoid and desperate, and that makes for a good protagonist in a crazy drama. Gael García Bernal is a fantastic actor as well, but I am confused about the point of him in the drama, other than maybe emotional support human? Matthew Macfadyen, however, is the perfect creepy antagonist. There’s an underlying current of thrill in his character, and the picture-perfect family setting just makes things even more intense.

Final Thoughts

Holland is such an odd watch. It feels like it has a lot of ideas and also none at all. It feels like it’s an insult to the immense talent in front of and behind the camera. If you get down to the nitty-gritty of it, the film has absolutely nothing to say of substance and delivers a thriller that doesn’t thrill, and neither does it invoke a sense of interest and intrigue. What an utter disappointment.

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