Holland review: Nicole Kidman can't save this exasperating, wayward thriller

The film is set not in the midst of the Low Countries, but in the quaint Michigan city founded by Dutch Americans, where windmills and tulips line the streets.

This kitschy backdrop is an ideal setting for a weird story, albeit one that veers wildly as the narrative unfolds. Kidman plays Nancy Vandergroot, a wife and mother whose picture-perfect life is about to unravel. Initially, she is in a flap due to a missing pearl earring, suspecting Candy (Rachel Sennott), the tutor to her 13-year-old son Harry (Belfast’s Jude Hill).

But soon her attention turns to her own backyard, as she figures her optometrist husband Fred (Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen) is having an affair after he goes out of town on one too many conferences.

"I’m the kinda guy you can depend on," babbles Fred, a "pillar of the community" who likes nothing more than playing with his intricate scale-model railway, alongside his son (they even wear cute caps with their names embroidered on them).

But can he be depended upon? Is he being unfaithful? Like her namesake Nancy Drew, Kidman’s character gets sleuthing, recruiting Dave (Gael García Bernal), the Mexican-born woodwork teacher working at the local school, to help her investigate.

If this sounds improbable, they’re soon sneaking around in sunglasses and baseball caps, whilst also developing feelings for each other.

Firstly, this makes it impossible to truly sympathise with Nancy, at least until the film’s third act reveal, by which point the script by Andrew Sodroski has entirely come off the rails.

Kidman’s thousand-yard stare of a performance doesn’t exactly help, a role where she seems unable to judge whether she should go all-out comic or hold back on some of the broader aspects. At one point she watches a clip from the Robin Williams classic Mrs Doubtfire, and it’s as if Kidman is trying to feast on that film’s energy – sadly with little luck.

Set in the late 1990s/early 2000s, a time when people still used telephone directories, microfiche and 'Ask Jeeves' as their internet search engine, director Mimi Cave (Fresh) has fun with oddball Dutch-inspired setting, all funnelled through the prism of picket-fence Americana.

A clever use of Fred’s model railway adds to the surreal atmosphere, especially in one effective nightmare sequence, but the uneven tone and muddled intent torpedoes the film. A social fable or a marital satire? It becomes impossible to pinpoint.

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Racism rears its head, when Bernal’s moustachioed Dave is attacked by some rednecks who urge him to "go back to Mexico" and "keep your hands off our women". But it’s a theme that goes nowhere in a film that seems more interested in style than substance.

Little is also subtle in a script that bluntly signposts the ultimate direction it will take, and the way the characters will go. Quite how Macfadyen escapes unscathed here, offering up an impressive turn, defies belief.

Cave never gets a grip on the story, which is a shame give the talent at her disposal, including composer Alex Somers (Nickel Boys), who delivers a foreboding score.

"Just gotta press the reset button," says Fred more than once, but Cave never does across a film that only fitfully conjures the dream-like atmosphere it aspires to. "Was it even real?" the characters ask. By the end, will you even care?

Holland is streaming on Prime Video from Thursday 27th April 2025.

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