Holland has been one of Prime Video's most-watched original movies this year, with the twisty thriller keeping viewers on the edge of their seats.
The movie centres on teacher and homemaker Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman) who appears to have the perfect life in Holland, Michigan. She's happily married to Fred (Matthew Macfadyen), but Fred is hiding a deadly secret.
As Nancy starts to suspect that Fred is having an affair on his multiple trips to conferences for work, she teams up with her colleague Dave (Gael García Bernal) to discover the truth – which will leave her wishing it was just an affair.
So what is Fred's secret? Let's dig into the twisted ending of Holland to explain all if you've still got questions, including whether any of it was real.
Major spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the movie yet.
Holland ending explained: What is Fred's secret?
When Nancy first suspects Fred is up to something, she explores the room where he has a massive model town that he's building with their son Harry. She finds a box of Polaroid film, but no photos which she thinks will be "kinky sex photos with his lover".
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Determined to find the photographic evidence, Nancy recruits Dave to help her break into Fred's office where she thinks she'll find them. She's right, she does find the photos, but they're mostly just photos of houses which she doesn't recognise.
The next time Fred goes for a three-day conference in Greenville, Nancy breaks into his hotel room and finds handcuffs, underwear and dog treats. She thinks this is evidence of his affair, and leaves Dave to continue spying on Fred while she goes back home to look after Harry.
Nancy takes another look at the model village and spots something from the photos she saw: a house with a sign for Lacey Anne for "Bologna Queen". As she tracks down the real-life Lacey, she's told that Lacey was murdered three years ago.
At the same time, Dave sees Fred meeting a woman in Greenville and catches him in the act of murdering her (while distracting her dogs with said treats).
Nancy discovers that every zipcode on Fred's model town plans relate to places where young women were murdered, making the model town a macabre reminder of everybody that Fred has killed over the years in his secret life.
Back in Greenville, Fred chases Dave in an attempt to stop him revealing all, but it only leads to Dave stabbing Fred with his own knife. Fred falls into a nearby lake and Dave heads back to Nancy, lying to her that Fred just decided to leave.
Dave tries to get Nancy to leave Holland too, but she doesn't want to ruin Harry's life by revealing all. "We just keep it hidden, that's what we do," she tells him.
Unfortunately for both of them, Fred isn't as dead as Dave thought and he comes back to town for the Tulip Time festival. Nancy takes Harry to a nearby motel, but when Dave arrives and tries to persuade her to call the police, a struggle ensues and a TV falls, hitting Dave on the head.
He's basically no help when Fred arrives at the motel and tries to manipulate Nancy into going back home with him. "I never crossed the line, but you did," he tells her as he knows that Nancy and Dave have plans to escape together.
"I think this could be really good for us now Nancy because we're in it together. We can really start working as a team again. It's not the real me that does that stuff, the real me is here with you and Harry, just like it's the real you here now with me and not in that motel room."
Fred wants Nancy to agree to hit the "reset button" and continue with their lives as though nothing has happened. But what Fred doesn't know is that Nancy now has the gun that Dave brought to the motel.
"You're not going to put me in one of your f**king little houses," Nancy tells Fred as she takes a shot. It doesn't quite hit the target and takes off most of Fred's left cheek and ear instead, but she finishes the job by beating him to death with a clog.
Nancy checks back in the motel room, but Dave is missing which at least hopefully means he isn't dead. Instead, he most likely just realised that his life would be much improved by not being in Holland, Michigan – and we can't blame him.
The final narration, which switches between Nancy and Dave, might have you thinking whether any of it actually happened. Maybe Dave was a figment of Nancy's imagination, and Fred was just a stand-up guy.
We're pretty sure everything played out as we actually saw it, but the enigmatic nature of the final scene is intentional.
"Maybe Dave was never there, maybe Nancy fantasised this whole relationship, and her fantasy was a catalyst toward the truth. If you look back in the film, it actually makes a lot of sense," director Mimi Cave told USA Today.
Whether or not Dave was real, Cave confirmed that Fred was dead whatever interpretation you took of the movie.
"I wanted Nancy to not only literally be the one to create real safety for herself and her son − which is sort of like eliminating the murderer that she's married to, but also, symbolically," she added.
"She's finally arriving in her life, and she's taking agency and action."
As for what happens next for Nancy and Harry, it depends how positive you want to be about whether they can keep Fred's dark secret hidden.
Holland is now available to watch on Prime Video.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
