Ever thought about hitting a Twitter troll in the head with a frying pan and then cutting one of his typing fingers off? Well, The Columnist executes just that, letting the audience live that fantasy through Femke Boot (Katja Herbers), an author, columnist, and single mother who’s been getting hate messages and death threats over a column she wrote. In director Ivo van Aart’s third feature written by Daan Windhorst characters ask questions like, “Why can’t we just have different opinions and be nice about it?” and say that words are just words, the internet isn’t real, and it’s as simple as, her boyfriend (Bram van der Kelen) says, never reading the comments. But like Femke, most of us can’t…

FrightFest Day #2 gets off to a decent start with an unusual Dutch take on cyber bullying wrapped up in a darkly comic revenger. I thought it might be painfully NOW reading the synopsis, but it's always slightly distanced from reality and doesn't ram its messaging down your throat or fall too much on the side of its protagonist. It doesn't miss a beat in the irony stakes; outspoken feminist column writer Femke Boot (pronounced 'boat', meaning boat) gunning down one of many haters as her daughter reads out an article she wrote in defence of free speech. As The Middle Finger Murderer, Femke is seen to be as much of a hypocrite as a symbol of female empowerment and…

The Columnist tackles social media culture to the extremes with a comedic revenge story rooted against these so-called trolls that do nothing but send hate comments and death threats in the form of "freedom of expression."

the film paints a message on freedom of expression, being allowed to say whatever you want to say. the rise of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter though tend to bring about hate and "cancel culture" if someone posts something that you don't agree with. for the film, it's Femke Boot's column and the topics that she writes about. she starts to receive hateful comments and even death threats.

this is so common nowadays with posts or even shares being used against you.…

If you have ever dealt with internet trolls, THE COLUMNIST is for you. While I do like its approach to the revenge film, I think what makes it so good is that it has something to say about why trolls suck and what they can do if they go too far. Our lead character of Femke Boot is a woman that is haunted by trolls and how they get into her head. Once they go to far, then she becomes that mad woman that you don't want to mess with.

While movies like Promising Young Woman and Revenge deal with women being victims of rape culture, The Columnist takes similar themes but shows how scary being a victim of internet…

I saw The Columnist getting some good reviews last year, and had been intrigued by its premise and poster art. Although it was never a top priority for me in terms of 2020 releases, I found out that Film Maudit 2.0 was showing it at their free virtual festival this week and I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to see it. Unfortunately, I found it to be pretty underwhelming. Its handling of its subject matter reminded me a lot of The Hunt (2020) in that it's hard to gauge just what the filmmaker wants you to take from this - except, unlike The Hunt, it fails to be at all entertaining as a horror/thriller film, with its mostly…

Life post-the advent of social media and the involvement of politics in it proves to be quite the experience. You'd enter what is essentially a hellhole upon logging in. Whether it's on Facebook or Twitter, there's always a war pitting critics against "trolls", and it's unending. In THE COLUMNIST, we circle back to pressing topics that two 'Black Mirror' episodes, namely 'Nosedive' and 'Hated in the Nation' had tackled. That is only its hook though, for the well-established conceit lies in the female perspective taking it to a complex, fascinating narrative route, which also garners universality fending off the specificity of cultural context ––– best depicted in a character opposing the ideals our lead later gets clawed by, and caves…