Whoa, I'm back, safe and sound and vaccinated and ready to review some media and post some more historical movie posters, and whatever else crosses my mind. THE COLUMNIST is a satirical horror movie from the Netherlands. Katja Herbers (pictured) plays an online columnist who becomes obsessed with a form of doomscrolling, constantly checking her Twitter and Facebooks feeds for trolls who insult her for expressing her liberal ideas--it's not completely clear what triggers the initial outpouring, but it seems to involved her critiquing, on racial grounds, the continuing existence of the myth of Black Peter, a mythic associate of St. Nicholas, often portrayed as a white man in blackface. The men, mostly arrogant incel-types, call her foul names, call for her vilification and issue violent death threats.
Haven't we all wanted to murder social media trolls? This character does. From online clues, she starts hunting down these guys, explains her mission, and kills them. Afterward, she snips off one of their fingers as a souvenir. Morally, a queasy situation develops in which we are actually on the side of the killer for a while, living out a cathartic revenge that we never actually would. We listen to the voice of morality, her boyfriend, a horror novelist (whose public persona is a hollow-eyed weirdo, but who actually is a sweet snuggler) but I'm not sure how we're ultimately supposed to feel by the bloody but cathartic ending. It's fun, the last couple of minutes in particular, but it doesn't let society or the audience off the hook. Even the asshole trolls are more or less humanized. Herbers plays her descent into enjoyment of her revenge very well. You'll laugh, you'll cringe, and maybe you'll think twice about posting that nasty misanthropic dig.
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