Review: Holy Spider

Image courtesy of Utopia.

Iran has recently abolished its morality police following protests stemming from the death of a young woman in their custody whose headscarf they said wasn't adjusted properly. Although the nation has seen various protests against its regime in recent years, this current one is - unlike the others - being led by women.

The release of Ali Abbasi's unsettling "Holy Spider" - a true crime thriller that follows the story of the Spider Killer, who murdered 16 female sex workers in the holy city of Mashhad between 2000 and 2001 - couldn't be more timely.

The film - which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival - chronicles the story of two characters during that fraught period in Iran: Saeed Hanaei (Mehdi Bajestani), a father of two, laborer, and Iran-Iraq war veteran who sneaks out at night on his motorcycle, picks up prostitutes, strangles them to death, and leaves their bodies wrapped up in carpets; and Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), an intrepid reporter investing the murders and being stymied by the police and pretty much everyone else, mostly because she's a woman.

While reports in the film note that Mashhad is shocked by the gruesome murders, Rahimi is not particularly. She sees all around her the misogyny that allows for the Spider Killer's murders to take place. Upon first checking into her hotel in Mashhad - where she has traveled to cover the murders - the man at the front desk attempts to not give her the room that has been promised because she is a woman traveling unaccompanied by a man. When she pulls out her press badge, he relents, but then takes the tactic that she must cover her hair so as not to draw the attention of the morality police. She tells him to mind his own business.

During her multiple interviews with the police, the investigating officer involved in the case doesn't take her seriously. At one point, he visits her in her hotel, and when she spurns his advances he becomes threatening and insults her for "smoking with any man," referencing a moment earlier in the film when she offered him a cigarette. When visiting the wife of Saeed - the murderer - later in the picture, Rahimi is told that the women targeted by her husband were asking for it for "wearing high heels and chewing gum." 

Most disturbing is the amount of support the Spider Killer receives from a not-small contingent of the public who support his "cleansing" of Mashhad's streets, and Rahimi is right not to trust the police, whom she believes are grateful to the serial killer for doing their job for them and also sympathetic, to an extent, to the man killing women whose lives they can't control. A final scene in which Rahimi interviews Saeed's family is disturbing on a whole other level.

Abbasi's third feature is a gripping serial killer thriller blended with bleak societal commentary. It's a far cry from his previous feature, the bizarre and kinky thriller "Border," although its grimy atmosphere and ongoing sense of unease it creates in the audience bears some similarities to the director's previous film. Due to the film's violence, subject matter, and - during one sequence - graphic sexual content, Abassi was not able to film in Iran, but instead made it in Jordan, although the recreation here feels authentic. 

Although there was apparently a female reporter investigating the murders, Rahimi is a fictional character - and the film's one scene that nearly tips toward the unbelievable makes this obvious. But her character - and Ebrahimi's powerful performance - are often the most compelling aspect of the picture.

And what makes "Holy Spider" so powerful is that Rahimi - and most of the women who appear in the picture - are not only tormented by the fact that a madman is stalking the streets of their city and murdering women, but also the daily indignities they suffer due to the misogyny that provides cover for and, in some instances, encouragement of a man like Saeed Hanaei. This is one of the year's best films.