Holland (dir. Mimi Cave)

by Jack Martin | Mar 27, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 108 mins

UK Distributor: Prime Video

UK Release Date: 27 March 2025

WHO’S IN HOLLAND?

Nicole Kidman, Gael García Bernal, Matthew Macfadyen, Jude Hill, Rachel Sennott, Lennon Parham, Isaac Krasner, Jeff Pope, Jacob Moran

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Mimi Cave (director), Andrew Sodroski (writer), Kate Churchill, Peter Dealbert, Nicole Kidman and Per Saari (producers), Alex Somers (composer), Pawel Pogorzelski (cinematographer), Martin Pensa (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A homemaker (Kidman) discovers a disturbing secret about her idyllic life…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON HOLLAND?

With the recent passing of David Lynch, many cinephiles will have undoubtedly revisited his filmography to experience his trademark surreal stylings all over again. Among that eclectic collection is Blue Velvet, a noir-like thriller that not only offered plenty of Lynch’s usual oddness, in addition to a genuinely compelling mystery, but was also among the first wave of movies to truly lift the lid on the dark and twisted underworld within the supposedly idyllic suburban life, paving the way for films like American Beauty, Donnie Darko, The Virgin Suicides and plenty more.

Holland, from director Mimi Cave and screenwriter Andrew Sodroski, is a film that desperately wants to be Blue Velvet. The suburban setting, the neo-noir tone, the attempted layer of mystery; really, all that’s missing are psychotic gangsters and sultry lounge singers. But try as they might, neither of them are able to match the complexity or sophistication of Lynch’s classic, in a film that’s ultimately empty in both substance and even style as it goes in a number of frustratingly aimless directions.

The film is set in the town of Holland, Michigan, where housewife and home economics teacher Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman) and her optometrist husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen), along with their young son Harry (Jude Hill), are upstanding members of their community and live a comfortable existence in the suburbs. However, Nancy soon catches wind of some odd behaviour on Fred’s part, which leads to her suspecting him of having an affair, and with friendly fellow teacher Dave (Gael García Bernal) she sets out to uncover the truth, only to discover something much more horrifying in the process.

You’ll have to wait a fair bit to find out what that is, though, for Holland adopts an unusually lethargic pace that focuses on perhaps the wrong things while glossing over many of the right ones. Sodroski’s script seems to be attempting a slow-burn approach, letting certain details emerge naturally rather than getting it all out in one go, until the pieces finally come together in a climax that gets, without giving the game away, rather bloody. But the problem is that there isn’t really much depth to this central mystery, or at least anything that suggests a major enough payoff to warrant all this lengthy build-up, so when the time comes for the big reveal it’s beyond the point where the audience should care, because much of what had preceded it has been filled with facts and details that ultimately don’t matter. You end up feeling nothing about anything, for there’s never a sense that the writer is leading his audience toward anything truly mind-blowing, and there’s been very little else to attach oneself to in the meantime.

The empty script also affects Cave’s direction, for while the filmmaker – on her second feature after the much more daring Fresh – certainly has a keen eye for visual flair, as provided by Ari Aster’s regular cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, she struggles to invoke a connection between the viewer and the narrative, or indeed any of the characters. Again, there’s just not a lot for her and her actors to work with, aside from incorporating some strangely artificial Dutch imagery from tulips to wooden clogs that, as Lynch did on Blue Velvet, create an eerie backdrop for the otherwise fruitless drama to unfold in front of. Cave is certainly evoking a Lynchian tone through the film, especially in numerous scenes and surreal dream sequences that all too steadily push the pleasant atmosphere towards a much darker place, but she lacks the drive to fully embrace the off-kilter path of her writer’s script, with a conclusion that almost gets to soap-opera levels of contrivance that, once more, doesn’t feel earned after a rather empty prelude.

There are performances from the cast that are also trying to emulate ones that you’d see in your typical Lynch movie, but end up coming off as caricatures from a lower-quality Coen Brothers film, which doesn’t quite fit alongside the intended narrative. You’ll have turns from the likes of Nicole Kidman and Matthew Macfadyen that are ranging from knowingly camp to deliberately coy, as though they got seriously lost from the set of Fargo, while Gael García Bernal is saddled with a largely underwritten part which doesn’t fully utilises his screen talents, though that’s nothing compared to how underutilised Rachel Sennott is here, for she shows up in one scene near the beginning as a rather insignificant character and is then completely absent from the rest of the movie. I’d bet good money that there’s a lot more of her on the cutting room floor, otherwise why would they cast this known actor for one scene in which she contributes nothing? It’s very bizarre, even for a movie thriving on bizarre vibes and nothing else.

The reason that Blue Velvet succeeded where Holland fails is that it always had something up its sleeve to keep the mystery alive, its characters engaging, and the style from becoming weightless. David Lynch recognised the importance of crafting a compelling narrative within a world ripe with intrigue, whereas Cave is saddled with a script by Sodroski that gives her none of that to work with, causing her to falter badly when trying to do what a surreal master like Lynch did far better almost forty years ago.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Holland is a frustratingly empty neo-noir mystery that falters in both substance, thanks to Andrew Sodroski’s lethargic and unengaging script, and style, with Mimi Cave’s aimless direction as well as a wide range of unfitting performances from the cast giving the viewer a Blue Velvet-style experience that never amounts to anything.