HOLLAND - A strangely dark premise

I hadn't seen a movie for a couple of weeks, and although it is true that there is quite a large offer in streaming, I had not felt encouraged with any of the proposals because I feel that they do not offer anything different, however, there are still strategies that usually serve the producers to attract attention and one of those is to place a recognized actor on the promotional cover of the film, and well, I must say that I decided to see this movie only because I saw Nicole Kidman as the main image.

The aforementioned actress is not necessarily one of my favorites, but lately I've seen her in interesting productions like The Northman, Special Ops: Lioness, The Undoing and Big Little Lies. So let's just say I fell into the trap and watched the movie attracted to a big Hollywood star. This movie is from the year 2025 and was produced by Amazon Prime, the director is Mimi Cave (who is unknown to me) and in addition to Nicole Kidman, it stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Matthew Macfadyen. I would say that the genre of this movie is suspense and thriller.

This film takes us to a small town called Holland which has strong traits of being inhabited by Dutch migrants, the infrastructure and the surnames of the inhabitants are like those of the aforementioned region, but additionally there are tulip fields, so if you are one of those people who do not pay much attention to the location then you might think that the events take place in Holland itself. There we see a family that seems to be quite conventional and even looks like a model family, the father is a hard worker as is the mother who is also an excellent housewife, and well, the son is quite average.

Nancy Vandergroot, the mother, is one of those women who likes to preserve traditions, but also appearances, so she sometimes struggles unnaturally to preserve the forms. At a certain moment, Nancy discovers a document in the garbage which seems to indicate that her husband was in a city that she did not know, which was impossible since she knows all her husband's movements either for work or for other activities, so according to her calculations her husband should never have been in that city, besides, the bank movements did not show anything either.

So, faced with growing doubts, Nancy asks a co-worker for support to investigate further what could be going on, so they plan to enter Nancy's husband's ophthalmology office during the night to look for clues. Thus, after some tense moments, Nancy manages to find evidence that her husband is not entirely truthful and from then on, a series of events begin that will gradually reveal activities of her husband that she never imagined.

I won't tell you more so as not to give you spoilers, but I can tell you that things get weird and dark, it turned out that Nancy lived all this time in a kind of lie in which her husband was hiding quite well an aspect of his life that wouldn't pass anyone's imagination.

The artistic forms of this film allow you to gradually immerse yourself in the story in a deep way, but at the same time it allows you to predict some of the events, also, you will draw conclusions that seem to be logical or clichés and finally end up happening. I must say that the aforementioned, although they seem to be negative aspects, do not detract from how interesting the film becomes.

If you are a fan of suspense then this movie is for you, it has good performances and also the director was responsible for generating an appropriate environment for the development of events. I liked how well stylized the location is and the good ending of the movie. I will give “Holland” a score of 7.5/10 as it turned out to be a pleasant surprise, beyond having an exceptional cast, the script allowed the events to unfold with a fairly sober storyline.