Directed by Ivo van Aart
Written by Daan Windhorst
Statting Genio de Groot, Katja Herbers, Rein Hofma
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour 26 minutes
In virtual cinemas and available on other digital platforms May 7

by Nikk Nelson, Cinematic Maniac

“Never read the comments.”
-Old Internet Proverb

I’m old enough to remember a very brief but glorious time when the Internet existed without comment sections. I remember feeling like it was going to save the world. And then, overnight it seemed, it became a place where people in semi-anonymity suddenly felt free to put a megaphone up to the nastiest, most depraved, and devoid of empathy thoughts they could possibly conjure directed at literally anything. Any opinion is met with this vitriol to the point that we all passively accept its presence as the price of admission. I made an active decision to stop participating in comment sections.

On my personal Facebook page, I stopped posting anything that could possibly be construed as political. I stick almost exclusively to memes and jokes in an honest effort to combat the wall of conspiracy, paranoia, sickness, and pain that otherwise dominates my newsfeed. If you haven’t seen The Social Dilemma (2020), I sort of recommend it. On the one hand, it brings up issues that definitely need to be discussed. On the other hand, a lot of the talking heads are millionaires that made their money getting us into this mess, can now afford a conscience, and are telling me I need to unplug from the mechanism that now drives a large part of our economy. I’m a film critic and a fiction and screenwriter—I want that to be my entire working life someday. And it simply will not happen without social media. In other words, I don’t really have a choice.

This pickle is at the heart of writer Daan Windhorst and director Ivo van Aart’s The Columnist (2019). The story follows Femke Boot, lifestyle columnist and aspiring novelist who is struggling against online abuse in social media. The crux of the film is a revenge fantasy. What if I met that troll who once told me if they ever found me they would kill me because I asked them to stop cyberbullying in a thread about who was the best Jason in the Friday the 13th franchise? What if I beat the ever-loving shit out of them? What if I killed them? Would they, in a very real way, deserve it? The film tackles this moral and emotionally complex set of questions through an awesomely icy performance from Katja Herbers as Femke, who, every time I see them, I remember they’re one of my favorite actors. The movie reminds me of Serial Mom (1994) but if it was played absolutely straight. You can’t help but root for Femke, empathize, and understand her. At the same time, from the moment of her first decision to cross the line into murder, you know exactly how this story ends.

I found this to be not exactly to the film’s detriment. Its style and confidence carry it through enough that, even though you know exactly where it’s going, you enjoy the scenery along the way. This was a film where an insane twist would have been welcome and its world was built especially for it. It doesn’t come and when it didn’t, I was somewhat disappointed, but realized that such a thing would have ultimately taken away from, what I felt to be, was the real intention of the film: a character study. Yes, there’s some broader political commentary taking place but really this is a story about Femke and Femke’s experience. At the end of the day, I appreciated that the preaching never started. The film asks a question and answers it.

--PS I shared a post on my Facebook newsfeed after I watched The Social Dilemma encouraging my friends to watch it and linked to an interview with one of the doc’s creators. A few days later, a friend messaged me and asked for the link. I went to my feed to get it and my post was gone. And I didn’t delete it. So, there is something very real happening in this online world that is rapidly approaching some sort of reckoning. Stay frosty out there, Jawners--