Holy Spider (dir. Ali Abbasi, 2022) — Review

Combining familiar procedural tropes of suspense and gore with the uncomfortable reality of life under the Islamic Republic of Iran, Holy Spider transcends the usual settings of the police station, courts and media, extending its remit of guilt and complicity to the societal and cultural norms that could create a serial killer. Based on the real-life murders of Iranian construction worker, Saeed Hanaei, arrested in 2001 for the murders of 16 sex workers in the holy city of Mashhad, the film mostly succeeds in conveying the visceral terror of his victims, in spite of the exoticism of its setting. Oddly familiar in its narration- from the perspective of a fictional female journalist with middle class, Western values and expectation- the Danish-German co-production nonetheless suggests that with Iranian protests continuing into their seventh month, such brutality could happen anywhere; the imams replaced by fundamentalist extremists of any persuasion.

Director and co-writer Abbasi exercises a grim artistic licence, which might otherwise border on snuff porn but in this context serves as a grim reminder of the continuing oppression of women in Iran. The real life 'Spider Killer' became a folk hero to the religious right after his arrest, proclaiming his holy mission to cleanse the city of prostitution; the torture, assault and murder of those who have protested in Iran since the killing in custody of Mahsha Ahmini in 2022 suggest that unlike Western true-crime shock docs like Dahmer, the violence in this fictionalised representation remains very real. Abbasi, known for his 2018 body-horror slasher Border, depicts the everyday life of Saeed and his contemporaries, particularly contrasting his warm, traditional family life with the unflinchingly realist depictions of his crimes. Here a real question for the Hollywood format arises: as European viewers laud the aestheticised depiction of a bleak reality- with a Cannes Best Actress win for its star Zar Amir-Ebrahimi, and Best Director nomination for Abbasi- where does one find the balance between representation and cheapness?

The killer, Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani) is portrayed as an angry and conflicted building-site worker and loving, traditional father who vents his rage at work with a sledgehammer, and at night by strangling prostitutes. A veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, he despises himself for not having been more of a hero, or a martyr, breaking down in tears at the local shrine of Shia Imam Reza. The film pursues a societal angle in favour of the victim-centric one, with the exception of a few intimate vignettes into the women's grim existences, and a genuinely moving moment when a father bursts into tears at the thought of his daughter’s wasted life.

A fictional investigative journalist from Tehran, Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) turns up in Mashhad to crack this long-running case; naturally, in her view, and the movie’s, the police have been notably indifferent to catching the killer because the cops and the judiciary and the culprit himself share the same patriarchal mindset. Rahimi befriends a scruffy, benign local newshound (Arash Ashtiani) – a composite invention – whom the Spider calls from a payphone to publicise his exploits. Together this odd couple talk to the sneering, sexist police chief Rostami (Sina Parvaneh) who wilfully treats Rahimi as a woman of loose morals to be threatened and sexually harassed with impunity.

In a time honoured and preposterous narrative device, Rahimi confronts the psychotic assailant by becoming the bait — she poses as a sex worker along the deserted lay-by and climbs aboard the back of Saeed’s scooter (the very same which took his son for a piggyback joyride), while her reporter pal follows in secret. Here again, the question arises of whether Abbasi's well-intentioned fictionalisation crosses the line into insouciance. It's tempting to compare Rahimi to the fictional protagonist of Zero Dark Thirty, the Hollywood propaganda blockbuster about the hunt for Bin Laden that created a fictional superwomen out of several sources in the name of a good cause. In this instance, too, the very real threat of extreme and graphically depicted violence overshadows the implausibility factor, adding a possibly insulting note to the notion that anyone strong and determined enough to bring down a state-sanctioned killer could be this thick. The movie’s final act depicts Saeed’s Ted Bundy-like eerie self-possession and unrepentant defiance in the dock almost to the black cap moment, ending with his young son acting out the murder on his younger sister, in a state of pride and joy. Brash though it may be in its treatment of sex work in the theocratic state of Iran, Holy Spider at least expresses the chillingly universal brutality- physical and psychological- of attitudes to women in a modern society, one which could be anywhere from Mashhad to Europe.