De kuthoer

It's very easy to interact with people you don't know on the internet; and it's very easy to be very mean to people you don't know. But might it also not be easy to take revenge on them? This is the central idea of Dutch comedy-thriller 'The Columnist', which keeps a mostly straight face even as its plot turns farcical. The central character is well-constructed, and there is a serious point about the toxic nature of social media. 'The Columnist' never quite reaches the peak of 'Black Mirror', but it's nicely paced and might just make you think twice about the difference between how you behave online and in real life.

Columnist and author Femke Boot (Katja Herbers) rails against the online discourse which includes countless disturbing attacks against her and her daughter Anna. The police dismisses her. She's struggling to write her next book. She spots nasty racist misogynist tweets apparently coming from her noisy neighbor. She goes on a murderous revenge rampage.

This is fine. I am most intrigued with Katja acting in her native tongue. She sounds like I expected. A more compelling story would have somebody else catfishing as the noisy neighbor. She kills an innocent and gets blackmailed for it. That's a good twist. Some of these people must be using burner accounts. It's trolling 101. It's too easy to track down these people and I don't believe that Femke can kill these men with her hands. I do like the freedom of speech argument. This is fine.

The Columnist (De kuthoer) is well made gore-thriller about a female newspaper columnist which gets a lot of abuse online, and decides she won't take it. She starts confronting the abusers, which also are among those close to her life. The film is well played, especially by the main role, which really is 100% believable. Production value is good, and we all know how it is to surf the net, reading all the nastiness. Should we all prevail, or do something about it? This movie told in a somewhat hitchcockian style is a ripe thriller and a joyful watch - if you like films on the more macabre and dark funny side. The film is far from laugh out loud funny, but you tend to enjoy the cozy nasty bits, due to only the way it is made.

She did not hold a sex slave in the basement (and many other thing). But she did become a terrible person just like those trash-critic saying on Internet.

In the end, this movie is not about some regular and easy issue. It's about how fail we alway are as being a human.

It treads on similar thematic territory to Serial Mom without any of John Waters' quirky flair. Mostly it keeps a pretty straight face and plays the outrageous situation for satirical dry humour. It's low budget, though that's only evident from the bare bones delivery, not because it fails at what it attempts, and the performances are strong without being over the top.

Of course, it's not the 90s and this regular mom hasn't snapped for no good reason, it's because the internet. Taking shots at the pitfalls of social media and cyber bullying in this day and age is sort of low hanging fruit, but I can't say I've seen any other horror movie tackle the topic to justify a bloodbath, so I'll give it to them. It wraps this around some interesting insight on the double edged sword that is free speech, at least trying to give purpose to a killing spree.