A coverup from the land of burqas. Well, a land near burqas, at least. Seems very “fitting” one way or another, huh? Holy Spider is two good films, one thriller/criminal procedural film about a woman going undercover to catch a serial killer and one philosophical/political about the response of the state and its citizenry to the murders. Spoiler: they’re not as fussed as they should be.
Iran can be a country as forward as the United States and … as backwards as the United States. On the one hand, the populace will find themselves in different eras championing the ways of the West, with freedom of expression and education for all … and it seems like ten minutes later a mullah takes over the place and before long it’s mandatory-headscarves-this and “death-to-the-great-Satan”-that. Sadly, Holy Spider falls into the latter category.
Arezoo Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) is an undercover journalist from Tehran. She’s gone to the holy city of Mashhad to investigate a series of murders. The killer isn’t a secret. Saeed Hanaei (Mehdi Bajestani) travels around on his motorbike looking for hookers to strangle. Our killer has assumed the latter; he just looks for women hanging out on roundabouts. Part of the power of this film is how open the whole thing is – we know the killer because, I’m guessing, everybody knows the killer. The police just don’t seem terribly interested in “solving the case.”
So you’ve basically got an Erin Brockovich situation where one relentless woman is determined to fight everybody to get to the bottom of this (although there really isn’t a whole lot of detection needed here). And there’s the part where Irani Erin Brockovich is putting her life on the line. One thing that absolutely floors me about the tale is that Saeed Hanaei is a family man. He has a wife and three children; he has to find ways to get them out of the house so he can invite over prostitutes to murder.
How does that play in Iran?
“Honey, this is 
the last straw! You’re clearly cheating on me!”
“NO! NO! You have it wrong! Yes, I invite women over, but then I kill them!”
“Phew. Oh, thank goodness.”
And the fact that Hanaei is a family man underscores exactly how little he values the lives of some v. others. Wow, dude, you could win a representative seat in the Bible Belt, no doubt. As the picture progresses, two themes come to life: the danger that Rahimi has put herself in and the chilling indifference of the community. The citizens of Mashhad see a certain hierarchy of populace within the area and they don’t seem to have a problem with the elimination of the lowest caste.
Holy Spider is a powerful and disturbing film. It is chilling in the (accurate) portrayal of locals excusing evil. The screenplay is based on actual events of murders in 2000-01 in which Hanaei was celebrated by the locals and the police took forever to do their job. Hey, look, Iran has its own Kyle Rittenhouse. And, again, I would love for Holy Spider to play in the movie houses of the Republican-controlled South, but even then, the people who need to see this film would never come.
There once was a dude from Iran
Who killed as part of “God’s plan”
His behavior merited time
Yet the superlative crime
Were the monsters who excused it, deadpan
Not Rated, 118 Minutes
Director: Ali Abbasi
Writer: Ali Abbasi, Afshin Kamran Bahrami
Genre: The evil that men do … and the society that condones it
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: SJWs
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The kind of people who voted against Trump’s impeachment
