Holy Spider
Borders director Ali Abbasi's new thriller explores the spate of faith-driven murders of sex workers that took place in Iran in the early 00s. Its depiction of the violence is chilling, but it also relies on the sensationalism of the violence it critiques
Between 2000 and 2001, a man named Saeed Hanaei killed 16 sex workers, dumping their bodies along the river of Iran’s holiest city, Mashhad, where the shrine of Imam Reza resides. It is in this space between the sacred and profane, public morality and private horror, that Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider prowls. The Iranian-Danish director returns with his first Persian-language feature, a slasher procedural that vibrates with righteous anger at the daily violence of women’s lives under the Iranian state.
Despite its clinical, Fincher-esque aesthetic, Holy Spider is largely guided by this kind of desperate emotion, with all the depth – and messiness – that implies. The murders are shown in garish detail, while the contexts that led to a man’s religious crusade to cleanse the streets of his city – the hypocrisies of the Islamic regime, the legacies of the Iran-Iraq war, the systemic disempowerment of women – are thrust pell-mell into every scene. What Holy Spider depicts is chilling, but it also relies too much on the very violence it critiques, leading to a curious sense of desensitisation.
Yet there is an unflinching quality to Abbasi’s filmmaking – Holy Spider was produced in Europe and filmed in Jordan, bypassing Iran’s censorship laws – that captures the visceral reality of women’s inescapable embodiment: sanitary towels stuffed in bags, a knife in a pocket, a black chador wrapped over everything. Following months of protests in Iran, Holy Spider feels like it hits harder now; although perhaps it shouldn’t. It is a decades-old story, in every possible way.
Released 20 Jan by MUBI; certificate 18