Two weeks ago, David Edelstein attracted ridiculously outsized ire from the fanboy community for daring to do his job––ie, give his considered opinion on the cinematic value of The Dark Knight. Still, even the most vocal critics of Edelstein’s criticism didn’t really do anything more hostile than declare his review to be “bullshit.”

But other critics who reviewed the latest Batman film less than positively aren’t getting off so easily.

Today Filmbrain takes a look at the increasingly hostile, threatening comments that have stacked up on the negative Knight reviews published by two of his friends (and mine), Jurgen Fauth and Keith Uhlich:

Neither of their reviews was intended to provoke, nor were they playing the contrarian — they simply didn’t like the film. As of this writing there are 938 comments in response to these reviews. (Both at their sites as well as their links on Rotten Tomatoes.) Some go no deeper than Fag!; some are actually amusing - Keep your head in Little Women and Suffrage texts you pansy, but others are downright ugly.

He then excerpts from a comment on Keith’s review, which begins, “You know, some people have been so enraged by your little opinion piece that they want you to kill yourself. Please DON’T!!! You know why, because I am going to have so much fun killing you myself!” It gets worse from there.

Ultimately, Filmbrain concludes that such reactions stem from the fact that “The Dark Knight has become a religion, an opiate, and an ethos. It’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra for the post-literate set.”

If it’s a “religion,” then it’s a faith based on psychotic delusion. This is really amazing to me, this idea that the audience can become so obsessed with a film that they’ll actually rise up en masse to physically threaten anyone who dares speak negatively about it. I guess it’s the best, cheapest marketing Warners could hope for––detractors are silenced, and they don’t even have to lift a finger. Which is, you know…pretty gross.