Review of Holy Spider / عنکبوت مقدس , directed by Ali Abbasi

Holy Spider is one of those films I had been eagerly waiting to see, got really excited the day it was added to Netflix, and then promptly procrastinated on watching it for many months.

I knew I wanted to see the movie originally when it was announced in the Cannes Film Festival lineup—a lot of my research tends to dive into the performance spaces of Iranian and Iranian diaspora women and how they present themselves in public versus private spaces. When this was added to Netflix, I was knee deep in that kind of research.

Anyways, as I mentioned before, I procrastinated for so long to watch this. It took when my laptop was (I spilled tea on my laptop in a really dumb way one day) and I forced myself to take a break for me to see the movie, as I was on the couch and needed something to do at home. I devoured the film in one sitting, and I think that there’s a lot to break down when it comes to this film.

Let’s get into the review, shall we?

A serial killer targets “immoral” women in Mashhad, and a journalist is on his tail.

The film begins with laying the scene down in what is happening Mashhad. A prostitute wanders the streets at nights in search of some money to make, as she has a daughter at home. A man wanders past and tells her he can pay her quite a bit for her services, and she gets on his scooter.

They head into what he claims is his apartment, but when she goes inside, she realizes something is very wrong. She turns around, then he chokes her to death with her hijab.

The scene changes to a journalist, Arezoo, arrived in the city. She has come from Tehran to investigate the string of killings against street prostitutes, but she’s already get roundabout answers when she tries to check into the hotel. Because she is a solo woman, people don’t want to take her seriously.

Arezoo meets with a male journalist in the area, who tells her what the police have been saying, and the guy, Sharifi, has had messages from the killer.

The killer’s motives, as he lays down, is that he thinks he is cleansing the city in the name of Imam Reza. He thinks that the prostitutes are terrible, sinful women that are bogging down the minds of the people around them because of their sex and the drugs they’re on.

With these women gone, the streets are cleaner and more holy. The ironic thing is—people are supporting this ideology, saying that the women should be killed for their actions.

At the same time, we pivot from the journalists to the killer himself, Saeed. He’s an average guy living in the city of Mashhad, and he has several kids.

He’s a devout Muslim and his wife believes him to be devout as well, and when he goes out at night to murder the prostitutes, he doesn’t tell his family.

He also is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, and he has a well-connected support network of fellow veterans. We also see him murder many more women, which leads us see what is happening even more—it’s violent.

He rolls a woman up in a Persian carpet at one point inside of his home.

We go back to the two journalists. They figure out where Saeed has been picking up these women. So Arezoo dresses herself up as a prostitute and waits for him. He arrives, he gets on his motorbike.

They go to his apartment, and when he tries to kill her, she fights back. He almost overpowers her, but when Arezoo starts screaming out the window, he backs off and lets her go. It’s her police report that ends up getting him arrested, but the people are on his side.

His family is distraught, but they also believe in what Saeed did. He’s told to plead insanity, but because he refuses to back down on his religious beliefs he ends up getting an execution order.

He is executed, led into the room by his veteran friends who tell him he is going to be free, and he is hanged.

Arezoo goes home, reviewing the video footage, and the film ends with Saeed’s son saying that his father is justified, he will follow in his footsteps, and he mimes how his father killed the women with his younger sister.

Overall Thoughts

Obviously, this can be a disturbing movie to watch throughout, especially when it comes to the scenes when the women were murdered. I think that this is an important movie, though, as it was based on an actual case that happened in Mashhad during the early 2000s.

A man murdered a bunch of prostitutes and the public was in support of him because they were seen as immoral women.

As a member of the diaspora Iranian community, I think these shed light on how deep the prejudices against women are in Iran. The prostitutes don’t really have a choice but to become a prostitute, but they don’t deserve death because of it.

How they died is also really horrible, and we shouldn’t forget how easy it is to blame them with such a deeply embedded hate.

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