Review: Exploitative Iranian serial-killer thriller Holy Spider makes a bloody mess of itself

• Holy Spider
• Directed by Ali Abbasi
• Written by Ali Abbasi and Afshin Kamran Bahrami
• Starring Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Mehdi Bajestani and Arash Ashtiani
• Classification R; 116 minutes
• Opens in choose theatres Nov. 18

There are a number of methods to make a serial killer film, and within the typically compelling and typically repellent Holy Spider, filmmaker Ali Abbasi has chosen all of them. Directly exploitative and contemplative, thrilling and disgusting, the movie makes a bloody mess of itself earlier than coming near fixing its personal case.

Primarily based on the true story of serial killer Saeed Hanaei, a faithful household man in Mashhad, Iran, who killed 16 ladies (lots of them intercourse employees) within the early aughts after which tried a legal defence that painted him as a hero who cleansed the streets of immorality, Abbasi’s movie very badly needs to be seen as a fiery takedown of the misogyny that guidelines Iran. However the filmmaker, who was born in Tehran and is now primarily based in Copenhagen, doesn’t appear to know the way to take action with out additionally indulging in the identical type of titillating ugliness that he’s satisfied he’s rallying in opposition to. In Holy Spider, the street to good intentions is paved by a complete lot of useless ladies.

Whereas the movie is break up between two views – the murderous actions of Saeed (Mehdi Bakestani), and the investigation into his crimes by the crusading journalist Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) – Abbasi is clearly extra fascinated with the lurid antics of his story’s killer. However what might need been a possibility to undertake a scalpel-precise post-mortem of Iran’s patriarchy is swapped in favour of the hacking of a rusty butcher’s knife to a handful of true-crime film clichés. We don’t be taught a lot about Saeed apart from he’s quiet and pissed off, however do get to see him kill one helpless lady after one other, with a very throat-gurgling sound-mix consideration paid to his most well-liked technique of execution (strangulation).

One or two killings may get the purpose throughout, however Holy Spider – whereas slick and smart to the best serial-killer stress factors of style grasp David Fincher – will not be a film constructed for subtlety, introspection or thematic complexity. Even Rahimi’s story factors towards the apparent, along with her character, a wholly fictional creation, not solely intent on reporting on the societal ills of Iran but additionally a sufferer of them herself. When she finally ends up strolling into the spider’s lair herself, Abbasi’s movie suggestions over into whole hokum.

The movie’s second half, focusing not on the forensic particulars of the murders however the cultural response to them, will get near what I feel, or maybe hope, Abassi is definitely involved in exploring. However the dialogue right here, too, is so blunt that the film solely finally ends up condemning its personal poky technique of filmmaking. The frustration is all of the extra crushing when you notice that Abbasi is just some years faraway from making one of many extra imaginative movies of current years, the folk-horror love story Border, from 2018.

I’ll give Abbasi’s new movie one level: it ends on a story gag as merciless and chilly as Saeed’s preliminary killing spree. For one second, Holy Spider reaches a spot the place conception and execution meet in good, brutal concord.