by Sofia Lammali
Loosely based on a real life serial killer who targeted sex workers in the holy city of Mashhad in Iran, Holy Spider employs a split narrative framework. One narrative follows the perspective of the serial killer, another follows a journalist’s attempts to unmask him. A lesser film would have made these narrative switches confusing and messy, but Holy Spider manages to weave these two threads together in a really effective and powerful way, offering a chilling insight into the psychology of a serial murderer and religious fanatic.
Criticism of the film has quite justifiably focused on how the victims are dehumanised and discarded in the plot – never fully realised as people. Director Ali Abbasi instead uses this particular story to make a wider point about how women are treated in Iranian society, in which the serial killer’s motivations for killing sex workers are viewed as justifiable and a female journalist’s attempts to investigate are treated as a nuisance. For most of the runtime, the audience is left in suspense of whether or not he will evade justice. This tension is heightened by Zar Amir Ebrahimi’s excellent portrayal of the journalist, which earned her Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival.
It is difficult to separate this story, which follows an incident that happened in 2001, from the current women’s uprisings in Iran – a country finally experiencing a reckoning after years of women’s rights being consistently undermined. The final scene of Holy Spider offers a chilling depiction of how the cycle of patriarchal violence, without opposition, will continue for years to come.
