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Holy Spider Movie Review

Holy Spider is a 2022 Iranian crime thriller film directed by Ali Abbasi and starring Zar Amir Ebrahimi. It is an engaging, but very messy movie.

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“I’m gonna rid the streets of whores!

I ain’t gonna stop!“

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A journalist descends into the dark underbelly of the Iranian holy city of Mashhad as she investigates the serial killings of sex workers by the so-called Spider Killer, who believes he is cleansing the streets of sinners. This is mostly a Danish production, but I consider it an Iranian movie as the cast, director and setting as well as the themes are all Iranian. It’s based on a real life event, which makes the story even more horrifying.

Ali Abbasi is a promising director behind ‘Border’, which was my personal favorite film of 2018. Unfortunately, this is a much inferior movie that does have some solid directorial flair, but for the most part it’s too structurally and tonally chaotic for it to work properly.

What we have here are basically two movies very problematically rolled into one. The first half is your standard serial killer thriller that is quite disturbing and graphic in its violence, but consistently intense and riveting. The second half is where the movie switches gears and becomes a social drama that heavily criticizes the misogyny of the country and the laws that help perpetuate it even more.

I would say that both of these movies are good when watched individually. However, we cannot evaluate them individually as this is one movie, so the end result is a total mess as the two do not fit well with each other. One is an almost exploitative thriller while the other is an important feminist drama. The two just could not co-exist coherently within this story.

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Mehdi Bajestani is quite creepy as the serial killer and the character is well developed. The standout is obviously Zar Amir Ebrahimi in a stellar, emotional performance. This character is mostly fictional, but she worked in the context of the story. Holy Spider is also superbly shot, the murder scenes are suitably horrific and the movie is well edited, but it needed a better structure to make it more potent.