Holy Spider Is a Grim Depiction of Real-Life Iranian Murders

It’s easy enough to see what Holy Spider is about: In the Iranian city of Mashhad, serial killer Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani) picks up and murders 16 sex workers, while woman journalist Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahami) investigates the case. But describing what the film itself is becomes far more difficult. Is it just a slice of urban sleaze, an exploitation movie that happened to play Cannes? An exposé on screwed-up male behavior and misogyny in Iran (and, by implication, elsewhere)? A demonstration of the very thin line between “normal” life and violence? 

Refusing to tell this story as a mystery, Holy Spider — based on real events that took place early in the 21st century — alternates between the lives of Saeed and Rahimi. In the film’s opening scenes, a sex worker sleeps with a client, then encounters Saeed, who kills her. Rahimi, accompanied by a male driver, has just arrived in Mashhad. The police force is less than helpful — a boorish cop sexually harasses her, then insults her for smoking cigarettes. Other men are just as patronizing. She’s forced to put herself on the line to have a chance to catch Saeed. Although Saeed’s behavior toward his family has an undercurrent of menacing tension, his son Ali looks up to him, and his wife shares his contempt for sex workers. 

After its world premiere in May, Holy Spider lands in Nashville theaters at the odd, unintentional intersection of two cultural and political markers. The backlash to true crime is steadily growing, even as its audience is also growing. The families of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims lambasted the makers of Dahmer — Monster: The Dahmer Story for retraumatizing them, accusing them of glamorizing a killer, but it’s one of the most popular series in Netflix’s history. Meanwhile, mass protests began in Iran on Sept. 16, following the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest for not wearing her hijab according to government standards. The protests, mostly led by women, have reached a point at which failure or revolution look like the only options. Holy Spider is about a real-life killer who strangles women with their own headscarves. The connection is obvious, but so is the film’s ambivalence. 

Although director and co-writer Ali Abbasi now resides in Denmark, he was born in Iran and lived there at the time of the murders depicted in Holy Spider. (The Iranian government never explicitly told him no, but he eventually chose to film in Jordan.) He wanted to capture the particular atmosphere of Mashhad, and Holy Spider fills the city’s streets with bright, garish lights. A sickly shade of green dominates the film. Public space looks nauseatingly uninviting.  

The choice to alternate between the viewpoints of Saeed and Rahimi isn’t a pleasant one, and Holy Spider incorporates the death throes of all the women killed by Saeed during the film — it’s out to make the audience uncomfortable. Despite Saeed’s self-righteousness, his behavior hints at necrophiliac urges, as well as sexual repression manifesting itself in his choice of sex workers as targets. Although Rahimi gets her share of time in the narrative, Holy Spider feels far more engaged with him. It tangles complicity and critique into a fine web. 

In the film’s final third, the results of that weaving become clearer. Holy Spider actually becomes grimmer once society’s reaction to Saeed takes the stage, and it’s hardly subtle. Its fascination with violence against women doesn’t go down easily, particularly in a film whose killer and victims are based on real people. While Holy Spider has been compared to the work of David Fincher, the post-Hays Code nastiness of Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy also comes to mind. However, its bloodless final scene, which shows misogyny being passed down the family tree, is the hardest one to watch.