In Holland’s ending, both Dave and Nancy raised the same question, “Was it even real?” The opening and end credits of the film were eerily similar, except for the fact Fred Vandergroot, Nancy’s husband, disappeared from her life. [Spoiler Alert] Yes, Nancy killed him… smashed his head in and blew his brains out with the white clog, which was a part of their traditional folk dances. This footwear could symbolize the shiny shackles that Fred and men like him had put on the women of the town to turn them into their prisoners, only they weren’t really aware of the true nature of their imprisonment. The miniature diorama in Fred’s home explored the recurring themes of the film, i.e., individual freedom and gender roles, similar to Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House.” But the question that still lingers at the end is, did Nancy really find a way out, or is she still stuck in someone else’s dollhouse? And the most important question of all: how much of the film’s narrative was actually real?
Fred Was The Captor
The ending of Holland revealed that Dutchman Fred Vandergroot, in reality, was a serial killer to whom all the women in the town were nothing but mere dolls. He chose to play with them whenever he wanted and returned home when he got bored with his toys. The entirety of Michigan was Fred’s playground, to say the least. He had a miniature diorama in his house where he had marked the houses of all the women he had killed so far. I believe Fred would often befriend independent women and then invest in the relationship before finally slaughtering them. And while all this was happening, he would carve a model of the victim’s house, as some sort of trophy for the killing. What was worse, Fred was indoctrinating his young son, Harry, into the practice, which was one of the reasons why Nancy wanted to protect her kid from his father’s influence. Fred being an optometrist also highlights the fact that he could deceive people into seeing things that weren’t real.
In the film’s beginning, Fred, while holding a knife in his hand, told his son “to keep the peace,” which foreshadowed how he actually used to kill his victims and dismember their bodies so that the authorities would never find a trace of them. Well, classic Patrick Bateman, if you ask me. In one of the scenes, Fred even directed Harry to cut off a doll’s head, foreshadowing the death of one of his victims later in the film.
Nancy Was Fred’s Puppet
Speaking of Nancy, she was an ideal wife for Fred, and the perfect puppet for the dominating male figure. He never really consulted her for her opinions and took most of her decisions for her. These were the reasons why Nancy often felt suffocated even though she believed that she had a perfect married life. Nancy couldn’t exactly point out the factors that made her feel like a prisoner because her cage wasn’t physical. It was a gilded one too, decorated to look like a happy marriage, which gave him the perfect cover to hide his heinous crimes. None would really suspect a man who was a loving husband and an overtly religious man, but we all know that the reality was far different. One of the reasons why Fred stuck with Nancy and didn’t kill her like the rest of his victims was because he could puppet her and make her submit to his will. And whenever Nancy crossed a line, he could easily push the button and do a hard “reset” so they could start again. In a way, Nancy was one of the visitors of the town whom he had been able to mold into his Dutch customs and traditions, and she was no longer an alien or an outsider. Giving new names to Nancy further implied that he treated her no more than a pet.
Nancy Saw Glitches In Her Reality
At the beginning of the film, Nancy saw her son, Harry, dressed in the Dutch costume that he was wearing during the Tulip Time parade at the end of the film. Additionally, Harry looked older than he was in the current timeline, which suggested that Nancy had lived these memories before and might be stuck in a loop where the Tulip Time meant the beginning of a new cycle or a new beginning for all the characters in Holland, Michigan. The constant mention of the windmills in the film further explores the fact that the characters are stuck in some sort of cycle that begins with the Tulip Time and ends, well, differently each time, as no one really knows the outcome. Actually, it was these minute details that made me think that much of what we saw in the film wasn’t real and Nancy was just making it up. Whether Fred was really a serial killer or Nancy imagined it all as she was eagerly looking for a reason to convince herself to leave Fred and escape her suffocating marriage. It’s like Bateman again, suffering a similar dilemma at the end of the film, wondering if his crimes were real or not. Or maybe, if I am not reaching too far here, she might be stuck in a simulation. Well, why else would someone tell a story set in 2000 where the lead protagonist was constantly glitching and dreaming about things that weren’t real? Or maybe the year, too, was a reference to the film, American Psycho, that came out in 2000.
Additionally, the curious case of the missing earring at the beginning of the film implied that someone might be controlling Nancy’s life from afar. She had looked for the missing earring almost everywhere in the house, but it suddenly appeared when Fred figured out that a single piece of jewelry was bothering his wife and toying with her mind. He wanted his wife to be focused and happy with no negative thoughts whatsoever, as the stress caused a glitch and made her see things that she shouldn’t have. Or it was Nancy, who from the very beginning, had been trying to find faults in her life, as she didn’t want it to be perfect anymore.
Dave Might Not Be Real
There’s also a possibility that Dave wasn’t real at all and just a figment of Nancy’s imagination she had created to save herself from her keeper, which could explain why Dave disappeared into thin air at the end of the film when Nancy had finally brought down the cage and killed the man who was keeping her a prisoner. It’s like she told Dave, “I think I am making it up just so I can play detective.” This also raises an important question, whether Fred was actually a serial killer or whether Nancy just wanted him to be so she could play the damsel in distress and rescue herself. Holland’s ending was evocative of Fight Club, implying that Dave and Nancy could be the same person, though there were a lot of other people who had interacted with Dave, because of which I am not completely sure of this theory, but let me know in the comments below if you felt the same. However, if he was real, then it’s likely that he left town after such a violent encounter, believing that he had killed a man, and Nancy was no less a psycho than her husband.
Nancy killed Fred
In Holland’s ending, Nancy’s lover, Dave Delgado, who followed Fred to Greenville to collect evidence against him, caught him red-handed, quite literally, near a lake house. Now, here Dave had accidentally stabbed Fred, and soon after the clash between the two, Fred fell into the water, suggesting he wouldn’t survive. But the man returned, which made Nancy convinced that Dave had lied to her. It was obvious that Nancy no longer wanted a hero in her life. She didn’t want Dave to be the one to save her from her miserable life, and wanted to take charge, which was why she wanted to kill Fred with her own hands so she could find some closure. She wanted to bring down the walls of her prison herself, and likely that’s what she did when she raised her voice against her captor and finally killed him in the car. By killing Fred, she finally found a way out, but she still didn’t know if she was really free or had just fallen into another large prison outside Fred’s dollhouse. It could be possible that Nancy was still a prisoner of the Tulip land, except for the fact that Fred wasn’t around to control their lives. Meanwhile, Dave, who suddenly disappeared after a head wound, likely fled the land and went back to where he had come from.
The Tulips Were Everywhere
Obviously when a film tries to almost make a motif out of an object throughout its runtime, then it has to mean something, right? If I had been a Dutchman myself, I guess I would have been able to come up with a better explanation for the tulips and the festival, but here I am trying my best to explain the symbolism. I believe the colorful tulips sort of maintained the appearance of a perfectly happy life in Holland, Michigan, making it impossible for the residents to see the faults in their society. These colorful, picturesque flowers hid the evils of the town, just like Nancy and Fred’s picture-perfect portrait, where you wouldn’t be able to spot the cracks in their marriage, but the devil is in the details, like the missing earring or the subtle grooming. A garden full of tulips is everyone’s go-to spot, but if one were to sleep under it, it could be fatally poisonous, because at night, these very beautiful-looking plants release carbon dioxide. And this could be the reason why Nancy often felt suffocated and wanted to fight the tulips in her life, so she could finally breathe free air. However, the question that still remains is: did Nancy find her freedom? I believe, yes, at least in her own mind, she erased the demon from her life and was no longer a prisoner. But because the film had been ambiguous from the very beginning and didn’t give any conclusive answer, I am sure everyone might have a different explanation for its ending. With that said, I would love to know your thoughts on its ending, so feel free to comment below.
