What exactly is wrong with me? Or more exactly, what is wrong with other people? I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Holland, only to be completely surprised at the low score it received, currently sitting at 5/10 on IMDb with 6.3k ratings so far. WHAT? Like really…WHAT?? I’m hoping the score will get bumped up a bit higher when it’s all said and done, but I’m extremely frustrated this movie scored lower than The Monkey. Holland is a really good psychological drama/thriller. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s pretty damn enjoyable to me.

Per usual, I find it best to just go into the movie blind. What I discovered is that this looked like your typical beautiful-but-bored-wife-looking-for-excitement-because-she-thinks-her-husband-is-cheating type of movie. So there is that cliché, and I’m assuming many viewers will likely roll their eyes upon discovering it. However, the proof is in the pudding. I love that they stuck with an early to mid-90’s vibe along with the warmer color palette, but at the same time, the theme wasn’t thrown in your face every single moment to let you know of that fact. Nicole Kidman, Gael Bernal, and Matthew Macfadyen played their parts very well. The star of the show, of course, is Nicole Kidman. She plays the beautiful and dutiful housewife. At times, she can be cute, clueless, and naive, but she can also be very manipulative to get what she wants.

Part way through the movie, there were a couple of outcomes that most viewers likely believe would happen in the end. First, the usual and cliche “nothing is real” and that Nancy was just hallucinating things. There were a scene or two that suggested this when she was talking with her husband. Dare they pull a Shutter Island type of ending? But naw, that’s likely too ambitious. Secondly, and something I felt would occur sooner or later, would be the realization that Fred was just the decoy villain. Nancy and Dave were so fixated on catching Fred cheating so that they could be together that the story would make a complete 180 and turn it around where he would instead be the innocent one. Turns out, I was wrong on both assumptions. 😂

I took the movie ending to be exactly as it is. There were no hallucinations, and Fred really was the asshole. Dave likely bailed the hell out of town, never to return. Nancy and her son Harry would have to start their lives over, also very likely moving out of Holland as well. OK, so two things that caught my attention that needed more explanation. First, what exactly caused Dave to freak out during the cop scene? He laughed when Nancy suggested a parking ticket violation hardly counts as a “run-in” with the police and that it was something much worse. But it wasn’t talked about afterwards? Maybe we can assume that Nancy, with her boring and mundane life, was able to sense that there was something darker and more sinister in Dave deep down, which ultimately drew her towards wanting him? She was very aroused when Dave beat up the racist dude who drove by and messed up his house.

Lastly, I felt it a bit weird and not conforming to the story during the ending scene when Harry obediently listened to his mother and got out of the car when she forced Fred to a stop. It was easy to see, with a couple of scenes throughout the movie, that Harry was more of a daddy’s boy instead of mommy’s. He skipped movie and pizza night with his mother to be at a friend’s sleepover instead. In addition, he bonded really well with Fred over his train and town miniature display set. Therefore, I found it just a bit weird that he would have listened to his mother immediately and gotten out of the car to escape from daddy. In fact, I thought a darker ending would have also been appropriate where Harry didn’t get out of the car and instead helped his dad to kill or subdue his mom. Remember the scene where Harry snipped off the toy character’s head? Um yeah, I was sure at that point that boy was going to be on the dark side going forward. This darker alternative ending I can see Nancy, if she’s still alive, being right back in their house, stuck forever in her “perfect” but mundane life with no one else in Holland coming to her rescue.