Holy Spider is a heartstopping serial killer thriller

Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s latest work Holy Spider is a heart-in-the-mouth kind of non-gimmicky serial thriller that does the genre proud. From the style in which it is shot(rugged ruminative and direct) to the way the characters appear in the light of the crimes being committed, to the depiction of sexism and gender equality in “progressive” parts of Iran…it all adds up to an extraordinary film experience.

The plot based on a chilling real-life serial killer in Iran, Saeed Hanaei, played with a pungent zeal by Mehdi Bajestani, who murdered sixteen prostitutes between 2000 and 2001, with a jihadi single-mindedness. Saeed thought he was “cleansing” society by getting rid of the “filth”.

More shocking than the murders is the social sanction they got from a section of the Iranian people who celebrated Saeed execution as that of a martyr. His young son is shown putting out a video at the end on how his father probably carried out the murders.

Abbasi has a firm grip over the slippery narrative. One slip in the moral equilibrium would have resulted in a complete collapse of the narrative. Abbas keeps the tempo and the temperament tightly tethered. There is no extra meat in this sinewy saga .The murders of the prostitutes are recorded in a ritualistic spiral, as thought doom and decadence are soul brothers in a regressive society.

I don’t know far we can go with trusting Abbasi’s journalist heroine. A smoking rebellious investigative warrior, Arezoo Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) struck me as too much of an emblematic figure fighting off bigotry at every step from the minute she steps into the city of Mashhad where the murders took place(the film was actually shot in Turkey).

The hotel receptionist looks at Rahimi suspiciously: she is smoking, she is aggressive , she is alone and her veil is not in place. Rahimi is shown to wear the pants during the investigation. A softspoken male colleague warns her to go easy on the killer’s trail. Another male character a helpful police officer barges into her hotel room asking for sexual encounter mouthing Harvey Weinstein kind of you-better-be-good-to-me threats,

Such incidents barge into the plot reminding us too strongly that working women are subjected to harassment on many levels especially in conservative society. But this is not the place for that kind of message mongering. It is the serial killer’s mind that gives the plot its cutting edge. Each strike by Saeed is chilling. He thinks he is giving the prostitutes(each victim played with lip smacking relish) the death they deserve.

I am sure if Holy Spider is ever shown in Iran(which it won’t) some sections of the audience would applaud. Ali Abbasi and his co-writer Afshin Kamran Bahrami, identify societal prejudices in a closed society but are unable to bring out those prejudices sensitively when applied to the fearless female journalist who is cornered in dark alleys by a sinister bike rider, but is unable to tell us why we must applaud her guts when the script is doing more than enough of it.

The film has been shortlisted for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. It has strong chances of winning. It is a haunting if somewhat askew depiction of a society in smothered mourning.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.

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