SXSW '25: Holland

Let’s get this out of the way first: Nicole Kidman is excellent in Holland, the new mystery-thriller from director Mimi Cave (who previously directed Fresh). With three decades of experience playing disillusioned housewives and women at the crux of mysteries, there was never any doubt she’d deliver in this latest, which had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival. However, a stellar performance and quirky setting don’t make up for the fact that Holland has little to say.

Kidman plays Nancy, a teacher in the idyllic little town of Holland, Michigan, sometime in the ambiguous early 2000s. In a voiceover that’s repeated at the end of the movie in a trend I wish would die (Gone Girl did it best, please no more), Nancy tells us she was lost and aimless in her hometown until she was swept away by her now-husband Fred Vandergroot (Matthew Macfadyen). Now safely ensconced in Holland, Nancy leads a comfortable life with Fred—an optometrist who takes surprisingly frequent business trips for his line of work—and their son Harry (Jude Hill). But that comfort is making Nancy itch with boredom, no matter how many times she tells us she’s grateful to Fred for giving her the life she has.

Nancy finds an outlet for her boredom by concocting suspicious plots involving those around her. The movie opens as she accuses teenage babysitter Candy (Rachel Sennott) of stealing a single pearl earring and unceremoniously fires her; and one laundry day, as she empties Fred’s pockets, she finds a receipt from a trip he never told her he went on. This innocuous slip of paper launches Nancy into an increasingly paranoid hunt to discover whether her devoted husband is actually a secret adulterer.

Joining her on this journey is fellow teacher Dave (Gael García Bernal), new in town but not welcomed into the fold of white, WASP-y homogeneity. Kidman and Bernal are both magnetic on-screen. There’s a manic, desperate undertone to Nancy’s character, and Kidman makes her every anxiety, desire and motivation readable to the audience through the smallest glances and clutching hand movements. In turn, Bernal plays Dave as a calming foil to Nancy’s mania—and in an ironic turn of events, a dream of a supportive lover as the adrenaline rush from playing detective drives them into an affair. As Nancy finds more and more puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together, the roles of wife and mother that used to define her threaten to cave in on her. 
Unfortunately for the cast, Holland’s disjointed plot and lost threads prevent meaningful character arcs for Nancy, Dave or Fred. Plot points that might hint at deeper motivations or greater conflict are picked up and put down almost immediately, like a racist townie who shows up once or twice to harass Dave and put Nancy on edge before disappearing from the plot entirely. The movie also suffers from a lack of tension, spending so much time building up a perception of Fred as an indulgent if dismissive husband that it’s hard to imagine any real conflict arising from him finding out about her paranoid daydreams. 

While the plot remains incoherent, Cave does succeed in creating an unsettling atmosphere through surreal, melting nightmares that haunt Nancy and a recurring motif of Holland as a miniature model town. The set for their home is particularly effective—it’s filled to the brim with tchotchkes and Dutch keepsakes, underlining Nancy’s desperate attachment to Holland, with oppressively floral curtains shutting light out and creating a dim, claustrophobic trap for her. In one scene, Nancy gets so wrapped up in a tidal wave of emotions that she squeezes almost an entire bottle of ketchup on top of her usual meatloaf dish, creating what looks like a bloody mess and cracking her usual veneer of tidiness. Combined with off-kilter camerawork and a frantic pace, Cave at least makes the movie an enjoyable ride from empty thrill to empty thrill. 

But with a third act reveal that takes the spotlight away from the quirks and psychological unsteadiness of Nancy’s character, it’s hard to find a reason to care how the overarching mystery will play out. Holland’s script, by Andrew Sordoski, first gained notice on the 2013 Black List and almost made it to production the following year. That time lapse proves a detriment to the film—a decade later, Holland’s themes have been thoroughly mined to greater effect elsewhere. 

If you enjoyed this article, please consider becoming a patron of Hyperreal Film Journal for as low as $3 a month!