Holland, Mi., is a type of high-concept American cities the place nothing feels actual. Modeled after somebody’s fantasy of an 18th-century Dutch village, it has windmills and tulip fields and ersatz canal homes. To Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman), it appears quaint, however to our eyes, it’s pure kitsch — which is a mode Kidman does nicely, channeling the tone of “To Die For” and “The Stepford Wives” in Mimi Cave’s mysterious thriller.

Like these motion pictures, “Holland” embeds us largely in its protagonist’s perspective, which isn’t a wholly credible place to spend two hours, however a enjoyable one for many who like teetering in that is-she-crazy-or-is-she-the-only-sane-person-here zone. Because it’s Cave behind the digital camera, your creativeness will probably leap to explanations much more attention-grabbing than the place Andrew Sodroski’s Black Listed script winds up. (Enjoyable reality: At one level, “Holland” was supposed to be Errol Morris’ fiction debut, with Naomi Watts within the lead.)

The movie marks Cave’s follow-up to “Recent,” a ghoulish relationship satire — and a pioneering instance of the rising gaslighting style — through which a captivating dork (Sebastian Stan) topics his dates to a uncommon type of torture (make that medium uncommon). However it was written earlier than #MeToo made standing as much as The Man such a inventive sport, and in the end seems like a throwback to ’90s-era sleeping-with-the-enemy motion pictures.

So what sort of thoughts video games may Nancy’s husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) be as much as? A conscientious (if barely patronizing) companion and revered neighborhood optometrist, the person spends most of his free time tinkering along with his mannequin railroad, a pastime he enthusiastically shares with their adolescent son Harry (Jude Hill, the kid star of Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” offered right here like an escapee from Village of the Damned). In a single scene, she checks in on the 2 of them in Fred’s non-public practice room, the place she sees her husband clipping the limbs off a plastic 1:87-scale lady. That hardly appears regular, however nothing is in Nancy’s world.

It’s attention-grabbing to see “Holland,” which premiered on the SXSW movie competition prematurely of its March 27 Prime launch, lower than two months after the demise of David Lynch, since he’s clearly a powerful affect on Cave’s hallucinatory aesthetic. As Nancy’s voiceover describes her life in Holland as “one of the best place on earth,” the digital camera sweeps alongside rows of Kodachrome-intense tulips, earlier than abruptly slicing to the litter of her life — an apparent nod to Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” in regards to the nightmare festering behind the American Dream.

Nancy suspects one thing’s not fairly proper along with her marriage, however she will’t put her finger on what’s amiss. Reality be advised, she’s developed extramarital emotions for Dave (Gael García Bernal), the sympathetic store trainer at the highschool the place she works, which implies this might all be an elaborate case of projection: Nancy needs to cheat, so she manufactures a state of affairs the place Fred’s being untrue to justify her personal indiscretions. But when it had been that straightforward, she most likely wouldn’t go fairly thus far to research him.

Sodroski’s screenplay references rocky moments within the couple’s previous, in addition to a time when Nancy’s life was far much less idyllic than the Pleasantville existence that’s lastly beginning to bore her. “While you develop up on the skin of all the pieces, and a man provides you a approach in, in fact you’re going to take it,” Nancy tells Dave, a Mexican for whom transferring to Holland didn’t essentially enhance the way in which others deal with him. (A subplot involving a drunken and certain abusive ex-bus driver illustrates the bigotry nonetheless directed his approach.)

We will assume that as a trainer, Nancy should have loads of colleagues and mates she will open up to, however given the upstanding entrance the Vandergroots undertaking to this churchy neighborhood, she trusts solely Dave, enlisting him in her investigation. Because the type of partner who cooks and cleans like a Nineteen Fifties housewife, Nancy is aware of their house inside-out. “Ipso facto,” she concludes, no matter proof may exist of Fred’s extramarital actions have to be hidden away in his workplace secure.

Cave clearly enjoys orchestrating a pair of “Rear Window”-style suspense sequences, through which Nancy snoops first at Fred’s office and later into no matter her husband’s actually doing on these frequent out-of-town optometry conferences he’s all the time attending. The helmer takes even higher pleasure imagining Nancy’s goals, the place Cave is free to get radically expressionistic whereas additionally planting purple herrings. It’s throughout these visions that Cave’s crew begins to blur the road between Nancy’s life and the scale-model metropolis to which Fred dedicates a lot consideration.

The place all the pieces was meant to look idealized at first, as Nancy’s paranoia spirals, manufacturing designer JC Molina and “Midsommar” DP Pawel Pogorzelski lean into the anomaly. Pogorzelski particularly subliminally incorporates Nancy’s subjectivity into his camerawork, though there are extra self-conscious cases too, just like the ingenious high-angle shot, enhanced by tilt-shift trickery, that makes Nancy and Harry look as in the event that they’re tiny model-train figures working towards their entrance door.

By means of all of it, Macfadyen appears suspiciously good-natured, which merely encourages us to guess what he is likely to be hiding. The “Succession” star brings a disconcerting Kevin Spacey-like vitality to his efficiency, which reinforces the connection some may detect between “Holland” and 1999’s “American Magnificence” — one other film in regards to the poisonous black mould that thrives simply beneath the veneer of suburban perfection. After a number of years of wanting extra pure, Kidman additionally has a barely synthetic look (there’s one thing off along with her tulips), which Cave makes use of to the movie’s benefit.

“Holland” blossoms within the house the place all-American home fantasy ends and nightmares start, however by no means fairly delivers on its premise, if solely as a result of the decision feels so acquainted. And but, when thought of by the lens of Kidman’s risk-taking profession, it represents one other fascinating alternative for a star who’s racked up a few of the edgiest credit of the previous quarter-century. It’s a disgrace then that “Holland” doesn’t go father in both the freak-out or high-camp instructions.

Only one or two actually outrageous moments could make the distinction between forgettability and hall-of-fame effed-up-ness, and “Holland” takes probably the most surprising flip of all: As soon as the large household secret’s out within the open, it winds up feeling completely strange.