Mimi Cave’s directorial debut “Fresh” was a wildly inventive horror film that debuted at Sundance in 2021 then went direct to streaming – not getting the theatrical love the film justly deserved.

Cave’s sophomore film “Holland” is following a similar path – going from South by Southwest to Amazon Prime – but the results are not the same. Despite a game effort from Nicole Kidman this thriller never finds its footing, a film that only gets more confusing and convoluted as it goes.

Kidman stars as Nancy, a school teacher living a seemingly perfect life in the town of Holland, Michigan around the year 2000. Her husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) is a successful optometrist who is always away on business, while their son Harry (Jude Hill) is at that age where he is starting to rebel a bit.

Nancy starts to suspect that Fred’s business trips is actually an affair and sets off to prove her husband is cheating – with help from her co-worker Dave (Gael Garcia Bernal). The deeper Nancy and Dave get into their ‘investigation’ the more they start to realize that they may in fact be attracted to each other.

Cave once again shows a nice visual flair, able to build tension and keep the audience engaged to a degree with a stylish affair where the audience is waiting for the shoe to drop.

But “Holland” can’t match “Fresh” – which Cave wrote – because the screenplay lacks the same emotional depth as the previous film. Andrew Sodorski’s screenplay toys with several intriguing ideas – and even finds a way to go from dark comedy to horror without it being too jarring.

The problem is when the plot twist happens, it feels like something is missing – with the reveal leading to more questions than answers. There is just a feeling of incompleteness, a story that wasn’t fully fleshed out – leaving a lot of blanks left for the audience to fill on on their own.

Kidman does her best to try and do the heavy lifting, but the script fails her (plus her co-stars are nowhere as interesting as her creating a dramatic imbalance).

Perhaps the most frustrating element of “Holland” is you can still see Cave is a director on the rise. She knows her way around this genre, but needs material to match her talents. “Holland” is not that film.

If You Go
“Holland”
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Gael Garcia Bernal
Directed by: Mimi Cave
Rating: R for some bloody violence, language and brief sexuality
Playing at: Available for streaming on Amazon Prime
Grade: C-