Holy Spider

Directed by Ali Abbasi

Starring Alice Rahimi, Diana Al Hussen, Soraya Helli, Mehdi Bajestani, and Zar Amir-Ebrahimi

In theaters (limited release): Oct. 28, 2022

Streaming: Feb. 21, 2023

In my youth, I believed that anyone that watched foreign films and said they enjoyed them was a liar and a phony. It wasn’t possible for me to imagine anyone getting pleasure out of the weirdly abstract and slow-moving Scandinavian films, the fetish for the quotidian that French filmmakers seemed to have, or the cheesy production values of 1980s Chinese films.

And because of that long-held belief, I would never boast about liking foreign films today, for fear of sounding like a snob. But in fact, given a choice of two recommended films, I would always prefer to watch the one made outside of Hollywood.

That’s why I watched Holy Spider. It’s about an Iranian journalist, a woman, who is assigned to cover the murder of a string of prostitutes in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad. Based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei, who killed 16 women from 2000 to 2001, the movie is unlike any Hollywood movie of the same type, offering less of one thing but more of another.

What Holy Spider won’t give you is the psychological horror of Silence of the Lambs or the gut-wrenching pace of Psycho. But in place of those titillations, it will give you an idea of what it’s like to live in Iran today. The day-to-day experience of the populace. The hold that Islamic fundamentalism has on the culture. The relationship between the sexes. And especially what it’s like to live and work there as a professional woman.

Critical Reception 

Zar Amir-Ebrahimi won the Cannes Best Actress Award in 2022 – and though the film won several other awards (most of which I’ve never heard of), it wasn’t an overwhelming critical success.

* “[Holy Spider is] a tense, atmospheric piece of film-making, but it made me profoundly uncomfortable – and not, I should add, in a good way.” (Wendy Ide, Observer/UK)

 * “As a concept, it’s urgent and timely, but the execution is so muddled that the movie feels entirely defanged.” (Alison Willmore, New York Magazine)

* “Holy Spider trickily manages to bridge the gap between social realism and exploitation cinema in a way that hints at how both are rooted in a similar place of gritty authenticity.” (Mark Hanson, Slant Magazine)

You can watch the trailer here.