Holy Spider

Modern Iran’s worst serial killer, Saeed Hanaei, and the 16 female victims he lured into his home are chronicled in Iranian-born filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s third feature, titled Holy Spider. The film is gripping with its harrowing realism and essential in social commentary that holds some vivid execution in the way the murders are staged and recreated. It is a deeply disturbing and morally charged psychological thriller with procedural drama and psychological horror movie elements. Abbasi has made an uncompromising and gripping suspense thriller that descends from its strong moral compass and will require extra forgiveness from its viewers because the murders in the film are visceral and feel vividly real.

Hanaei took part in 16 gruesome murders between 2000 and 2001 in Mashhad, Iran. All of the victims were female prostitutes or drug addicts, and the murders in Iran are referred to as “spider-killings” by the Iranian press because he lured the women back to his home and strangled them and dumped their bodies in nearby fields, often wrapped in veils or rugs.

Courtesy of Utopia Distribution

Instantly recalling David Fincher’s Zodiac, the film unfolds with the power of the press attempting to investigate the murders, as the apathetic Iranian authoritarians and incompetent local law enforcement show just how lethargic and negligent the investigation has been because the victims are women prostitutes. Ahead of Hanaei’s narrative, the screenplay centers on Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), a female reporter covering the case who is very dissatisfied with the little progress the investigators have made with the murder cases. But before it becomes a compelling procedural, Abbasi and co-writer Afshin Kamran Bahrami are intent on paying tribute to some of the victims of what the running time allows. It’s very much in the vein of Gus Van Sant’s meritorious humanism on display in his 2003 masterpiece, Elephant. Abbasi decides to follow and give a substantial amount of screentime to the first victim on the last night of her life.

We’re introduced to Somayeh (Alice Rahimi), who has a battered body from rough clients. She puts her young child to sleep and waits for John on a busy street corner. She gets picked up by a very wealthy client, an older married man who verbally degrades her. She is quickly hurried out of the bathroom once she tries to treat her own bruises from her client’s wife’s lotion. She is coerced into performing a longer than expected fellatio by another John after he prevents her head from coming up when the cops drive by. As with the last client of the night, she gets picked up by Saeed on his motorcycle, and he takes her back to his apartment. She instantly senses danger going up into the apartment and begins to exit the apartment building. Saeed ends up choking her with her own headscarf on the stairways and disposes of the body by a cliff. From there, Abbasi builds this ominous and atmospheric world with many impressive handheld, cinema verité shots by cinematographer Nadim Carlsen, who utilizes many wide lenses and rich depth-of-field to heighten its claustrophobic effect. The film wasn’t permitted to shoot in Iran, and they shot in Amman, Jordan, but the cityscape locales work mainly due to the lens selection and impressive camera work that delivers the atmospheric dread.

Upon this murder, Abassi humanizes Saeed as he’s a respectful family man to his young daughter and teenage son (Mesbah Taleb), and a very respectful husband to his wife Fatima (Forouzan Jamshid Nejad). Each time Fatima and the children leave to visit Fatima’s parents, Saeed uses the time to ride out with his motorcycle and pick up local prostitutes. Each of the murders is problematic and risks becoming a conundrum of exploitation and harrowing, but Abbasi anchors the risk once he settles into themes of how suffocating misogyny truly is in a theocratic state that values women very little.

Above all, Abassi fabricates a compelling protagonist for the story that gives the film a progressive polemicizing, female journalist, Rashimi (Zar Ami-Ebahim) who is at odds with Iran’s regressive regime codes. Arriving from Tehran to cover the unresolved murders, Rahimi finds herself first denied access to her hotel reservation for not wearing her hijab properly (half of her hair is revealed).

While the character is certainly written in to bring a more female perspective and sensibility to broaden western appeal, the character is elevated away from being an ideological device. While the Iranian Film Council already has deep feelings about how they feel the horrific story is being “politized,” none of the insults and degradation Rahimi endures feels incurious or agenda-driven due to how accurate the behaviors on display really would be in that malaise. The police are disinterested in the case, and she is nearly assaulted after denying the chief inspector’s advances. It is no surprise that Iran has become an epicenter of gender-based violence.

It’s no surprise that Rashima ends up becoming the gallant girl reporter who pieces together her own investigation and sleuthing to much greater results than the apathetic and complicit local police force. The film becomes a cat-and-house game that switches between subplots of Rashim investigating for deeper evidence and of Saeed’s daily life, which is certainly unstable, where he gets impulses to pick up several different prostitutes at the end of his stretch. With murders continuing at an alarming rate, Rahimi decides to put her life in jeopardy as she begins to put on thick mascara and stand on the same street corners prostitutes solicit at. While the film indulges a lot with fictional characters and history, Holy Spider always remains gripping, and you can’t help but feel engrossed with some of the cat-and-mouse tensions that the film eventually builds up to.

While the film is terrifying—some seen in graphic detail—the film’s examination of the endless cycle of misogyny is the centerpiece of the film. Thankfully, the film’s ideology and combative spirit against fundamentalism prevent it from being exploitative cinema. These events actually happened, and sadly, women were strangled to death. It’s not going to be a pleasant image to endure. Furthermore, Abbasi is very compelled by Saeed Hanaei and tries to create some empathy for him in how he views himself as doing “Allah’s work.” Of course, viewers have little option but to be repulsed by his rationalizing. Regardless of how disgusting his reign of terror was, he creates a cult persona of followers. Some Iranians who may eventually see the film on a Torrent or something will probably have issues with the film’s creative liberties of fact-and-fiction, but the film’s core themes are a call to action that remain timely, especially during the Iran Women’s Protest movement that is currently generating support worldwide.

While the result is a movie that has issues with some contrivances and plausibility, it should be embraced for its fearless creative decisions. Holy Spider eventually becomes a cautionary tale about the misogynistic realty that still plagues Iran. Even when a solution is found in the third act, the film’s final scene leaves some skepticism and unravels with insights while commenting on the female degradation in Iran—which will sadly continue to go on until more hearts and minds are changed. While justice was eventually found for serial killer Saeed Hanaei’s vile actions, you don’t walk away feeling good from Holy Spider. The film’s main objective is to inform and build up awareness of a nation in turmoil–and while the devastating dread hovers over the film as Saeed Hanaei has become a folk hero to some radical extremists, it remains an essential snapshot of such an important part of history that still scars Iran today. The film is a plight for cultural revolution that tells a terrifying story with a sensible vision.

Holy Spider opens in limited theaters Friday October 28th.