"Holland": How Story Logic Problems Can Derail A Movie

Now that Nicole Kidman’s Holland has launched on Amazon Prime and the reviews are coming in, it’s worth taking a look at what, if any, problems the film's screenplay had.

If you haven’t seen Holland yet, take a time-out and go watch it because we've got some serious spoilers.

But first, here’s a little history on the project. Most of the film was shot in Middle Tennessee, thanks in no small part to Nicole Kidman’s having discovered (or rather re-discovered) the screenplay for Holland, Michigan as it was originally titled.

The script was written by Andrew Sodroski over a decade ago and was number one on the 2013 Blacklist. The 2013 draft was considered one of the best scripts in town that couldn’t get a green light. The script got so much heat from rocking the Blacklist that Errol Morris was being floated as a director and Naomi Watts was eyed to play the lead role. As happens frequently, that deal fell through and Holland, Michigan was DOA. The project became viable once Kidman was interested in it and then it was off to the races.

Now to its credit, I feel Holland has a great setup and had potential to be the next Fargo. And yet, it ends up falling apart around the same place that most screenplays, amateur and professional, tend to go off the rails – between the midpoint and the second act break (between pages 60-90). Again, if you haven’t seen the film yet, tap out now and go watch it because here there be spoilers!

Nicole Kidman as Nancy Vandergroot in Amazon's "Holland"

Kidman’s character Nancy Vandergroot, who suspects her husband Fred is cheating on her and has uncovered clues as to where he’s headed for his next (alleged) tryst, enlists her co-worker Dave to follow Fred and get pictures of Fred’s affair so she can blackmail Fred and live happily ever after with Dave. So Dave follows Fred to a house in the next town over. Rather than get video of Fred’s affair through the window (something which has already happened to Dave and Nancy and should have served as a blueprint to Dave on how to get the goods on Fred), Dave instead becomes bold enough to enter a stranger’s lake house, sneak past a group of dogs who could (but conveniently don’t) bark and reveal his presence, and then sneak up to the bedroom door with his video camera to catch Fred in the act. Meanwhile, Nancy is trying to warn Dave not to go into the house because she’s just uncovered evidence that Fred might be a murderer. Conveniently though, Dave has left his phone in the car and doesn't get Nancy's warning. What Dave discovers inside the house isn’t that Fred is sleeping with a mistress, but in fact is murdering this woman! Dave freaks out and reveals his presence, Fred goes after Dave, but Dave manages to slow Fred down by stabbing him in the leg with Fred's own murder weapon. Dave then tries to get on a boat and escape the scene, but Fred catches up to him. Fred kicks Dave to the ground instead of killing him even though he got the jump on Dave, has possession of a knife, and is clearly capable of murder. Instead, in a series of quick edits in a dimly-lit nighttime scene, Dave somehow gets the knife off of Fred and stabs him. Fred falls into the lake, seemingly dead.

Now based on how I’ve described this scene at the lake house (which begins at about 1:14:00 into the film), you’d think the problem here is Dave being stupid by going into the house to get his video evidence. Or maybe it’s the unlikely way that Dave wins the fight and kills Fred. Those are both legit assumptions for you to make, but those aren’t actually the reason Holland fails. It’s what happens next, after Fred is "killed" by Dave.

Let’s look at the context of what’s happened in this scene and in previous ones. Despite all outward appearances, Fred is a serial killer. Once Nancy gets evidence of this in a montage of investigative work, she could take her suspicions to the police and rid herself of Fred and continue her life with Dave. Obviously, she doesn’t do this or the movie is over, so we get some clever cross-cutting to make sure that Nancy doesn't have enough time to warn Dave of Fred's true nature. Once Dave catches Fred at the lake house in the act of killing a woman (whose identity and reason for being there are never explained) and manages to survive an attack by Fred, what does Dave do? He runs.

But why does Dave flee the murder scene at all? He's done nothing wrong. He killed Fred in self-defense, a fact that the movie even reminds us about later. Why wouldn’t Dave, who has been a thoughtful, level-headed guy through the whole movie, just call the police once Fred has fallen into the lake? He could simply tell the police the truth – that he was investigating an affair on behalf of his co-worker; that he personally witnessed Fred murder a woman and has the video and murder weapon to prove it; and that he had to defend himself from Fred’s attack. No jury in the world would convict Dave of anything – he is obviously a victim and there is evidence on tape, at the crime scene, and in Nancy’s possession to clear Dave of any wrongdoing. There are no extenuating circumstances for why Dave and Nancy wouldn't immediately go to the police. No one knows they’re having an affair, there is no one that could come exact revenge on Fred’s behalf… it is simply the case that the script needs Dave and Nancy to go underground after Fred’s death or the movie is over before the third act has even started.

There’s also no reason for Dave to lie to Nancy about what happened at the lake house and no reason for Nancy to hide what she’s learned about Fred from Dave (she did, in fact, try to warn him over the phone earlier). The story has some other questionable plot points, one of which is why Dave would have a gun buried in his front yard. Is handgun ownership illegal in Michigan? Somebody alert the NRA! We’re expected to believe that law-abiding Dave, who passed a background check to get hired by a public school would for some reason need to hide a 9mm pistol underground. In his front yard, no less, where the neighbors could see him digging it up. If there's a reason for this - and yes there needs to be - we are never told what it is. And then, when Dave believes that Fred might still be alive and wants to call the police, Nancy assaults Dave to stop him from phoning the cops. Her only rationale is that “you’ll ruin my son’s life… and yours!” But again, Dave has done nothing wrong other than uncover a murder and defend himself from the murderer. Nancy’s protestations exist simply to create conflict between the two of them and to keep the story afloat. There’s also the matter of why Nancy would have Dave’s 9mm on her when she confronts Fred in their car.

Suffice to say, the story logic problems in the second half of Holland only get worse and ultimately bring the story to a somewhat ridiculous climax which reduces Fred to a mustache-twirling stock villain who now throws around f-bombs instead of saying “fudge” and is harder to kill than Jason Voorhies. Meanwhile, Nancy becomes a stereotypical woman-in-jeopardy character who has littered dozens of bad Lifetime movies in the 90’s.

Smart characters doing dumb things is a recurring problem for screenwriters and it is the reason why Holland fails narratively, even though nearly every review of the film I’ve read so far has failed to talk about this massive problem in story logic. Which just goes to show, by the way, that most film reviewers can sense when something’s wrong with a movie even if they can’t put their finger on why it’s wrong.

And for you Nicole Kidman apologists and/or writers who have written story and plot logic problems similar to this… no, it’s not acceptable for your characters to behave in an irrational manner because “in real life, people panic and do dumb shit.” This isn’t real life, it’s a story – a stylized one at that – and neither Nancy or Dave were set up as people who are dumb or who panic when something goes wrong. It is the writer’s job to explain why and how their characters behave and to show situations that unfold in a logical manner, barring any context that justifies irrational actions. Anything else is lazy writing and an attempt to justify a poorly-developed story instead of doing the hard work of fixing the problem.

Which leads us to a question worth asking: Could Holland’s multiple story logic problems have been fixed in the decade that went by while the project languished in development hell? I suspect not or they would have been. Ironically, it’s probably these script problems that led to Holland, Michigan winding up on the Blacklist instead of being bought outright when it was originally being shopped around town. We’ll never know of course, short of digging up the studio coverage on the original draft. In any case, the film’s producers, director Mimi Cave, and Nicole Kidman either missed these various story and logic problems or, more likely, ignored them and hoped we wouldn’t notice.

For those of you who like to beat up on blockbusters like Star Wars and the MCU superhero movies and think the world would be better if Hollywood churned out more indie, character-driven films like Holland… understand that we do not see logic problems like this in a movie from Kevin Feige or Michael Bay. You may not like the big, loud franchise films, but that doesn’t mean they’re not well-crafted screenplays. Holland, which again, could have and should have risen to the level of something from the Coen Brothers, will now languish as a low-level, poorly-reviewed crime thriller because of flaws that frankly should have disqualified it from ever being made. Luckily for my friends who work cast and crew in Middle Tennessee, the project was greenlit and funded so congrats to all of them for getting work out of Holland, even though it fails creatively.

The lesson here for all of us as writers is that if you have to make characters be dumb or incompetent to get to the next plot point, you are doing something wrong and you need to take another swing at it. One of the reasons why TSA has hosted Open Mic feedback sessions for nearly 40 years is to try and help screenwriters catch problems early on and help them craft tighter, stronger, more engaging screen stories. Andrew Sodroski could have used some TSA feedback back in 2013, though he seems to have gotten lucky enough to get the film made and congratulations to him for doing so. But you, my friends can’t rely on luck. Or on a cheerleading manager who contributes to the Blacklist. Or on hope that someone will put your script into Nicole Kidman’s hands. All you can control is what your script is before you put it out into the world. So make sure it the best script possible and get feedback from people who know what they’re talking about instead of people who will just tell you what you want to hear. Your script and your career will be better for it.

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