Holland

Year of release : 2025

Run time : 1h50m

Genre : Thriller / Drama

Cast : Nicole Kidman, Gael Garcia Bernal, Matthew Macfadyen

Nancy lives in Holland, Michigan, a beautiful imitation of Holland, with her perfect husband, and son. Her husband travels for work a lot, although he is an optometrist, and she starts getting suspicious.

It all starts on the day she can't find one of her earrings, and she almost fires Candy, her 13 year old son's babysitter (whom he actually liked).

Her husband,Fred, doesn't seem too fazed by what happened to her, and tells her to look for it around the house.

Nancy confides in one of her colleagues, Dave (who's somewhat new to Holland, and the other teachers (they both teach, I think she teaches kids how to cook) do not talk to him), who is in love with her.

Nancy starts looking around the house after Dave tells her it's weird the babysitter only took one earring. This somehow turns into her looking through her husband's things, trying to find out if he cheats (as calling his room he didn't answer), and finds polaroids, although they don't have a Polaroid camera.

She goes through his pants, wanting to wash his clothes, and finds a parking ticket from Madison, although he's never told her he's been there.

A while later, she finds her earring in a trinket jar she already looked through.

After Fred tells her he has to leave again,for 3 days, she decides to look for the Polaroids at his office,and she's got the perfect way to get in, as Dave has an eye exam at his office,and she asks him to leave the window cracked. I don't understand why couldn't she get Fred's keys,but anyway!

She lies to her husband she's gonna leave with one of her friends out of town, and unluckily for her, that same woman comes that very night to Fred's office, as her son has problems with his contacts.

Before her husband almost caught her in his office, she found credit cards she didn't know about in his office safe, and an album with pictures of the front door of houses, out of which she recognizes one, as it's the same writing Fred has in his virtual model train railway and town.

Her and Dave, whom she started having an affair with (sort of,because apparently Dave also doesn't know what he wants, or maybe he knows too well), decide to follow Fred out of town, and see him buying food for dogs,underwear and hand cuffs .

While Dave stays behind, to follow Fred, Nancy goes back home, to her son, and finds more disturbing things in Fred's train model than that picture.

The movie started out well, but it bored me (I almost fell asleep!). It felt it didn't go anywhere, as the lead wanted to stay stuck in her miserable life, it's like she didn't know what she wanted. She wanted to keep her life as it was but without the husband, and figured out she can't keep the life without the husband, so she keeps him too! She says something to Dave, that her husband saved her from a small town, with a life going nowhere, but it seemed that's where she was now too.

The movie feels too slow, it takes about an hour for her to discover something fishy about her man.

I wish we'd see more of what the husband did,once they discovered it, not just be told about it, and be told why he does it, but there's no explanation.

The movie was set in 2000, for some reason, we find that out on the radio, we can also tell from the phones they are using, the pager the husband has, and based on the papers Nancy finds.

The film also was made to look old, as if we're really in that era. Or maybe that was just my impression?!

I liked the fact people were talking (in the beginning, in Dutch), and that they played Dutch songs.

I hated Nicole's hair, I do not know who did her hair, but it drove me crazy the whole movie!

The movie was in the works since 2013, with Naomi Watts and Bryan Cranston attached to it!

At the time, the screenplay was number one on the Blacklist (the list of screenplays not yet produced, not yet turned into a movie). I don't know what is it with this Blacklist, all the movies I've watched which's script was on it, sucked!

The movie received negative reviews, but it was reported as Amazon's most watched movie on March 29th 2025, so we must take their word for it.

The actors were good, my favorite was Matthew Macfadyen who plays the husband.

The soundtrack was good.

The movie is 30 days free on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads.

Rating : Could have been a contender !