FANTASIA 2020 REVIEW: THE COLUMNIST

Columnist and author Femke is flooded with anonymous nasty messages and death threats on social media. One day she has enough and decides to take revenge.

Starring: Genio de Groot, Katja Herbers, Claire Porro, and Rein Hofman

Directed by: Ivo van Aart

Written by: Daan Windhorst

A Fantasia International Film Festival Review

  With a thirst for new ideas, “The Columnist” brings audiences a good old revenge movie that’s very much in the now. Social media has consumed many of our lives whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or your choice of social media outlets. Some people can enjoy the good things about them, and block out the bad things. Then there are others like Femke (Katja Herbers) who can’t let go of the bad things. Usually people just drop off the social media platforms, but Femke takes it to a whole new level. 

  As a columnist, she’s always putting herself out there with her work. She appears on a show to talk about social media, and apparently some don’t agree with her. Instead of just agreeing to disagree, some people get nasty with her on her social media accounts. She gets more and more annoyed by it, and things change when she figures out that her neighbor is one of the people saying nasty stuff about her. And just like the flip of a switch she causally kills him off, and takes his middle finger as a souvenir.

  On the other side of things, her teenage daughter Anna (Claire Porro) is in a battle with her principle over freedom of speech. Like her mom, she’s taken up writing, and posts an article in the school paper that he doesn’t like. After meeting with him, she decides to push the issue and campaign for freedom of speech at her school. Her mom even agrees to go to her school, and talk about it. 

  The story is very well constructed as it covers both sides of the argument. On the surface both mom and daughter appear to be for free speech, but behind the scenes mom isn’t going to allow hate speech. The entire time she helps her daughter out she never stops to realize she’s actually not completely for freedom of speech. Even her boyfriend Steven (Bram van der Kelen) reminds her to ignore the comments from people, but she becomes obsessed with them. 

  While the debate over speech is interesting the real fun is her becoming a serial killer. There’s nothing overly complicated about what she does. She basically just confronts people, and kills them before they can do much about it. She makes sure to tell them it’s not nice to hate on people before she kills them. After seeing so many killers go to great lengths to cover up their crimes it’s funny to see how relaxed she is. The audience will totally expect her to be caught, but she keeps on going even after a few close calls. 

  Katja does a great job of handling her character’s progression from regular working mom to obsessed serial killer. Everything just plays out so naturally and well timed. The audience will slowly see the free speech debate evolve between mom and daughter without them even knowing it. The death scenes are fun, and get more intense by the end. The final scene couldn’t have turned out better for where Femke’s story was going. With that, I’ll use my freedom of speech to very carefully give “The Colmunist” 3 pools of blood! 

  HorrO

  

“The Columnist” is playing On Demand as part of the Fantasia 2020 Virtual Festival.