Ivo van Aart's The Columnist is a thought-provoking, controversial picture that is an absolute must watch. It holds a perfect amount of gore while teaching a valuable lesson to its audience.

| Original Score: A- | Feb 11, 2022

[The Columnist] is careful to tread the line between broadly satirical and a more sobering tone.

| Sep 26, 2021

This pitch-black horror comedy is equal parts timely social commentary and sly slasher flick.

| Jun 24, 2021

Bloody fun turns swiftly into an examination of the power of voice and the line between good guys and bad guys.

| Jun 5, 2021

There is a great horror film waiting to be made about the enervating dread of simply being a woman online, but The Columnist isn't that film.

| Original Score: C+ | Jun 3, 2021

It's wicked and cynical and I suspect Hollywood will want to remake it but will strip out its acidic nature.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 20, 2021

It's gruesomely entertaining, even as the point becomes muddled.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 13, 2021

It's cool and so darkly funny. It is pitch-black in its humor.

| May 13, 2021

The Columnist, for all of its flaws, is ultimately an incisive, satirical look at how revenge can be hollow if a bullied person becomes worse than the bullies ... Much of The Columnist is elevated by [Katja] Herbers' compelling performance.

| May 12, 2021

There's a giddy gruesomeness at the heart of Femke's blood-spattered new pastime, but awkward complications slow the story and prevent it from being fun or as harsh as it would like to be.

| Original Score: C+ | May 12, 2021

"The Columnist" is sharp, funny and uneasy, and speaks to the fallacy of the world we live in. It's a killer romp.

| Original Score: B | May 8, 2021

Instead of leaning into the campy pleasures to be had in an American Psycho or Serial Mom-style celebration of going bonkers, The Columnist juxtaposes the daughter's free speech crusade with her mom's blood-spattered campaign to silence her critics.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 7, 2021

Never *ever* read the comments

| May 7, 2021

In the end, Van Aart's The Columnist has surprisingly little to say about online violence against women.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 7, 2021

Despite the film's willingness to playfully stir unrest, it never reaches its full potential, and the promise of confronting abusers who hide behind avatars gets second billing to a less exciting defence of free speech.

| Original Score: B-minus | May 6, 2021

The Columnist is a satirical, bloody survey of the limits of free speech.

| Original Score: 7.7/10 | May 6, 2021

"The Columnist" doesn't seem to care about making a cogent statement about feminist revenge or online culture. Perhaps it just needed an excuse to carry out its bloody high jinks, which are decent fun in their own right.

| May 6, 2021

What might have been a trenchant cultural critique couched within poisonously playful genre exercise becomes an indulgence in undifferentiated rage for its own graphic sake.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 5, 2021

A Dutch treat of a parody.

| Original Score: B+ | May 2, 2021

Never better than when humorously expressing quizzicalness through everyday mannerisms, [Katja] Herbers (from 온라인카지노추천's Manhunt, Westworld, and Evil) gives a typically understated performance as Femke.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 2, 2021