“Holland,” a 2025 mystery-thriller film set in the quaint West Michigan town, released on Amazon Prime Video this week. Starring Nicole Kidman, produced by Amazon MGM, and directed by Mimi Cave, the film was partially filmed on-location in Holland in 2023. Recognizable locations include Holland’s famous windmill and a few blocks of downtown.
It opens with this: “Every day I get to wake up in the best place on earth, Holland, Michigan.”
Residents were ecstatic when the film was announced. One remarked to me, without a shred of irony or suspicion, that they were very glad the world would finally see what a nice place Holland is. Hollanders are like that—sincere in a way that’s become unfashionable elsewhere. It simply didn’t occur to them that, perhaps, Hollywood wouldn’t share their views of their beloved town. Or worse, that Holland was chosen specifically as a vehicle for more nefarious ideological metaphors.
Many Hollanders believe that first line without a shred of doubt, and for good reason. Holland is a lovely place. Yet, in the film, and in the general framework of Hollywood screenplays, the line reads as a ham-fisted attempt at irony. The line is obviously not sincere—the film’s Holland is not the best place on earth.
The film presents the city as pure artifice, an extended metaphor for people who pretend to be one thing on the outside but are hiding themselves on the inside. A fake city, all of the tulips and Dutch costumes are but a thin veneer hiding something grim.
It’s a stabbing attempt at social commentary that never gets below the surface. Mostly because the film is actually pretty bad. The narrative is flat and without character development. It borrows elements of a dozen different genres while never becoming anything cohesive. A thriller with no thrills, sad to say.
Hollywood types love this sort of shallow commentary, because they refuse to believe that sincerity can ever be real. That a place with identity, grounded in shared heritage and tradition, can actually be genuine and not hiding some interior malaise. They project their own sins upon these places in a self-assured attempt to believe that everyone is as messed up as they are.
Look, Holland isn’t without its faults. It’s incredibly kitschy. Saccharine at times. Artificial and performative, maybe ever so often, but not more than anywhere else in America. It’s not perfect, and probably not the best place in the world. But, true to the opening monologue, it is indeed a safe, happy place. The sort of place ideal for raising children.
My god, they even have heated sidewalks, didn’t you know? They melt the snow downtown in the wintertime, and it’s incredible. Leave it to the Dutch and their ingenuity.
Regarding the Dutch, the film presents an insulting attempt at racial dialogue too. Holland is, last I checked demographically, roughly 80% Dutch and 20% Mexican. Of the three main characters, Nicole Kidman and her husband are Dutch, and her wannabe beau is Mexican.
He’s subjected to a few racial epithets from Dutch characters at points and wonders out loud whether Holland would ever accept his tryst with Nicole Kidman because of his race. No mention of seducing a married woman, which the plot entirely justifies in the end.
Her husband is a serial killer, it turns out. Gasp! No mention of how, or why, or any particular reason. He’s just a sicko who likes to kill, hiding beneath his daytime identity as an optometrist. It’s the most one note trope possible to vilify his character—and, by extension, the Dutch people of Holland.
Outsiders, Nicole Kidman and her Mexican beau, are more noble than the true Hollanders, says the film. They want to integrate, but they’re shut out. Even when they’re included, they’re still kept in the dark about the hidden secrets, primordial sins, murderous activities. When they find it out, the visage of a perfect Holland shatters, and they can’t go back.
The thing is, I was once an outsider in Holland. I lived there for two years myself as a young bachelor professor at Hope College. Perhaps you saw me walking down Main Street every day towards campus, a young man with aviator glasses and a shock of blonde hair on his head. Perhaps you saw me drinking a beer at Our Brewing Co. or having a cappuccino at Lemonjello’s, likely carrying a camera of some sort.
I was a definite outsider—a New Yorker by birth. Italian and German ethnically, not Dutch. I went to U-M for college, but West Michigan is a whole different place from Ann Arbor, Holland especially. Holland is a place that stands on its own, with unique characteristics I became familiar with during my time there.
On the one hand, I related quite a bit to Nicole Kidman’s character crashing out as she runs downtown past the Windmill Restaurant. “Literally me fr,” as they’d say online, having manic episodes walking downtown in Holland. Not usually as horrible as her nightmares in the film, more often fun, festive jaunts down the street after a few beers with colleagues or a date gone well. Sometimes more somber though, contemplative, alone.
The thing is, yes, Holland can be isolating to outsiders. This is true. But it isn’t because of any nefarious trait from the city or its Dutch-descended residents. On the contrary, they’re far more welcoming than I’ve seen anywhere else. Strangers say hello to you on the street, sometimes even stop and talk to you.
I know they say it’s just a “Midwest nice” thing, that people will be friendly to your face but gossip behind your back, but I never really saw that.
Holland can feel isolating to outsiders because it’s a tight-knit community with shared heritage and traditions. I’ve never lived in a place with so many parades and cultural events. If you grew up there, I’m sure you feel like more of a part of it. Yet one look at the Dutch-costumed dancers at Tulip Time tells you that Dutch ethnicity isn’t a prerequisite for membership, so forget the racial angle.
You’re welcome to participate, but as an outsider, you do feel foreign there in a way you won’t in the rest of America. This reflects Holland’s strength, actually. It’s a distinct place that’s maintained a unique identity and resisted the homogenization of the rest of the country. It doesn’t feel like the ubiquitous American geography of nowhere, endless parking lots and strip malls.
Hollanders have worked hard to maintain this. The heated sidewalks weren’t simply incidental, they were a deliberate ploy by a Holland businessman in the 1980s to keep the downtown shopping district active and compete against a new mall being built nearby. It worked incredibly well, and Holland has a vibrant downtown to this day.
Holland feels like a unique place, and if you’re not from there, you do know it. But not because of any personal animus, prejudice, or deliberate ostracizing. On the contrary, it’s because of their virtue.
Because they love their town, and they’ve worked hard to maintain it, to keep it unique, to keep Holland as Holland. Let their hard work speak for itself, and forget the Hollywood noise.
Bobby Mars is art director of Michigan Enjoyer. Follow him on X @bobby_on_mars.
