The Columnist

If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that internet trolls are a pox. It's pretty easy, then, to sympathise with the antiheroine in this Dutch comedy horror, who goes on a bloody killing spree after receiving an endless stream of abuse online. Tracking down the (always male) perpetrators, author Femke Boot (Katja Herbers) exacts bloody vengeance, discovering power in unmasking her aggressors and, in the process, curing her writer's block. Heavily satirical and with the knowingly black atmosphere of a Grimm's fairy tale, The Columnist is unflinching in its challenging of modern society's so-called right to "freedom of speech". Debut director Ivo van Aart nimbly treads the line between comedy and tragedy, delivering a stylish, intermittently gory film that shocks and entertains without ever resorting to sermonising. Meanwhile, Herbers is nothing short of magnetic as the post-modern warrior whose actions may be morally bankrupt, but whose final moments are gleefully iconic.