The Columnist Review | Road Rash Reviews

4 star satisfyingly brutal revenge horror/comedy.

The Columnist is a Dutch horror/comedy written by Daan Windhorst (Locked Out, Suspicious Minds) and directed by Ivo van Aart (Spangas).

It is presented here in Dutch with English subtitles courtesy of Vertigo Releasing and is available to stream from 12th March on digital platforms in the UK.

“And now, Twitter, a curse or a blessing? Columnist Femke Boot wrote earlier this week that it’s about time to put a stop to those online hate messages and death threats aimed at her.”

Femke Boot (Katja Herbers – West World, The Leftovers) is a columnist for online publication Volksrant.nl. She is constantly bombarded on Twitter with negative, derogatory comments regarding her opinions and her personal life. She even receives death threats and threats to her daughter Anna (Claire Porro). She is frustrated in her professional life, trying to write a novel and suffering from writers block, she is unable to resist reading and rise above the comments section.

“Don’t read the comments. Never read the comments.”

One day while browsing the comments section and finding a particularly nasty remark, she recognizes the profile picture, it’s her next door neighbour Arjen Tol (Rein Hofman – The Admiral). Spotting an opportunity, she pushes him from the roof and takes his middle finger as a trophy. Liberated by her actions she finds the inspiration to begin writing again.

She also strikes up a relationship with novelist and former rival Steven Dood (Bram van der Kelen – Turbulent Skies) and work on her novel commences nicely. Meanwhile Anna is constantly in trouble at school for her insistence on the right to free speech for everyone, but she’s quite happy with her ongoing battle with the headmaster (Harry van Rijthoven -Papadag) and views it as a challenge.

Even as their life seems to be looking up, Femke is fueling her passion for writing with gory and brutal death, finding people using their social media profiles and killing them purely for their opinions in direct contradiction to everything her daughter stands for. How long can this killing spree go unnoticed?

The Columnist is a brilliant film, well written and fantastic acting performances from all concerned, as well as plenty of laugh out loud humour. It’s a really good idea for a story and quite satisfying to think that there could be some form of vigilante justice for nasty little keyboard warriors, albeit a little brutal.

The clever storytelling somehow makes us feel empathy for someone who is essential a cold blooded serial killer and Katja Herbers is superb in the role. The shocking finale is the perfect ending to a really good film, beware what you say out there in the world of social media, it might come back to bite you. Timely, relevant and well worth a watch.

“Ms. Boot. It’s just the Internet. It’s not real.”