In the early 2000s, a killer had been stalking sex workers in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad.  After each kill, he would phone the newspaper to report where the body was buried.  As his victim count increases, journalist Arezoo Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) is sent to report on the murders, but as she grows closer to the crimes, she becomes closer to the killer, too. 

Ali Abbasi premiered his crime thriller, Holy Spider, at the 2022 edition of the Cannes where he was nominated for the Palm d’Or and Ebrahimi won for Best Actress.  Working from a script he co-wrote with Afshin Kamran Bahrami, the 118-minute drama is quite violent as it chronicles the murder investigation, and the film – notably a Danish production – went on to be the country’s nominee for the 95th Academy Awards; making the shortlist but failing to secure a place on the final ballot.  It had a limited theatrical run in the United States from Utopia, but it was not until 2023 when the film hit Netflix that it became widely available to audiences.  

With a resume rooted in horror titles, Abbasi’s vision of this serial killer drama draws heavily on the film language established in the horror genre, and his focus on violence that makes Holy Spider feel slasher adjacent.  The shocking imagery and up-close camera – shot by Nadim Carlsen – adds a vicarial level to the film that works well in fiction but feels a little gross in works of non-fiction.  The script has a hard time figuring out who it wants to follow and thus creates some very uncomfortable moments that almost seem to glorify the murders more than condemn them. 

It is not hard to draw similarities between Holy Spider to other serial killer staples such as Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder (2003) or David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007) as both films are based on prolific serial cases, but the major difference is that the killer in Holy Spider has been captured.  Saeed Hanaei (Mehdi Bajestani) was brought in by Iranian police in July 2001 and later found guilty of murdering 16 women across a 12-month period.  Abbasi and Bahrami are quick to introduce Hanaei into the film.  The opening sequence follows Somayeh (Alice Rahimi) as she works the street and on what will be her last job of the evening, she begins to back away sensing something is wrong.  She was picked up by Hanaei, but wisely this is shot over the shoulder, so audiences do not see the man’s face creating a dangerous atmosphere. 

The mystery is quickly revealed as, while the script does not outright say that Hanaei is the “Spider Killer” in its text, the message is received loud and clear through the filmmaking.  Even this critique of the storytelling seems to sensationalize the story claiming that it tipped its hand and spoils the reveal, but the unbalanced script constantly struggles to determine who will be driving the narrative.  Often times, Rahimi goes long swaths of the film absent from the scene, instead, Abbasi opts to follow Hanaei giving him much more control of the narrative but not seeking to explain his motives with much depth or nuance other than his feelings that he is doing this to cleanse the streets of sin. 

While disagreement remains on how Abbasi chose to balance and steer this narrative, the filmmaking behind the rest of Holy Spider shows a very competent and confident director who has thoughtfully utilized repetition of imagery to create suspense and unease in his audience.  Because so much of the narrative follows Hanaei, we see him with his young son, Ali (Mesbah Taleb), smiling and laughing while he rides on the back of the same motorcycle his father uses to bring women back to the family home.  Later, we see him panic when his daughter discovers a half-eaten apple from his latest victim under the couch.  We also see flashes of violence when he lashes out against Ali at a picnic to discipline the boy for an accident. These moments all work in service to the final haunting sequence where Rahimi is reviewing her recorded interviews and lands on one of the brother and sister pair where Ali demonstrates how his father would subdue and discard of his victims, pinning them down with his leg and wrapping them in a rug.  The film is not making any allusions that Ali would grow up to emulate his father, continue his holy mission, and become a copycat killer, but rather, it shows a heartbreaking sequence of a child let down by his hero. 

Holy Spider is a complicated work to digest from Abbasi and one that does not always work as it feels it was intended.  He never quite finds the balance between Rahimi and Hanaei on who gets to control the narrative, and because so much time with spent with Hanaei, it does leave audiences feeling kind of dirty as we watch him execute woman after woman.  Abbasi is successful in representing Hanaei as a monster, and though the film does not endorse his actions, the concentration of scenes that follow the man certainly seem to glorify and immortalize him.  It seeks to understand why he committed these crimes – citing religion and guilt for having survived military service while other men gave their life to God and Country – but justifying a killer is always a hard ask for an audience and the script is just not strong enough in this aspect.  There are still some very strong sequences that keep audiences hooked – the family picnic, Hanaei realizing he has been trapped, and a thrilling twist of fate at his execution – Holy Spider is not an ineffective film, it is just a weaker film than Abbasi has proven he could make, both in looking at his past work but also looking at the high points which this crime thriller does achieve.