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

| May 13, 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

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

"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

Femke's tragedy is that she becomes in practice the very opposite of what she preaches: someone who shuts down the conversation and leaves those with whom she disagrees permanently silenced.

| Mar 13, 2021

The humour isn't sharpened to a fine point, leaving each new death to bludgeon in The Columnist's thesis with the blunt end

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 11, 2021

By the end of the movie, the revenge schtick sputters out, but nonetheless the film is still entertaining (pub. date: Sept 2020)

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 29, 2021

The biting and scathing script by Daan Windhorst doesn't just take more-than-deserved stabs at troll culture, but also a broader swipe about the very real perils of social media addiction.

| Oct 23, 2020

[T]his is a sophisticated take on over-the-top material, arch but not quite Serial Mom-style campy.

| Original Score: B | Sep 10, 2020