Unquestionably one of the stand-out films in last year’s FrightFest lineup was first-time feature director, Ivo van Aart’s hilarious and sadistic satire, The Columnist.
Smartly scripted and guaranteed to provoke debates long after its climax, the film features a sublime turn from Katja Herbers (“Westworld”, “Evil”) as a newspaper columnist and author suffering not only from writers’ block but a torrent of abuse and death threats on social media. When she discovers that her next-door neighbour is one of the anonymous people posting vile comments, she snaps and sets out on a mission: To track down all the trolls and deliver some swift, polite and deadly vengeance.
With The Columnist unleashing the trolls this 12th March, SCREAM sat down with Herbers to discuss how, despite its comical tone, the film addresses various unsettling timely truths, before she went on to reveal what fans of “Evil” can expect when it returns for season 2, hopefully sometime this Spring…
Words: Howard Gorman