Holy Spider is a Persian-language crime drama from writer-director Ali Abbasi, and writer Afshin Kamran Bahrami. The film, which is based on real events, depicts the murder spree of the so called Holy Spider serial killer, a man who strangled numerous prostitutes in the holy city of Masshad in an attempt to rid the streets of sin. With the police seemingly unequal, or just possibly indifferent to the task, a female journalist, Rahimi (Zahra Amir Ebrahimi) decides to investigate at great personal risk.

Although Holy Spider has the potential to be a taut cat and mouse thriller, the film is more interested in using its premise as a way of exposing the culture of misogyny that the filmmakers clearly see as prevalent in Iranian society. At the very opening of the film, before her investigation can even start, Rahimi meets with resistance simply for being a woman. She is almost barred entry to her hotel for travelling without a man. Then, when interviewing government officials she is given half-hearted reassurances that the killer’s actions are, against all appearances, not approved of. She is even threatened with sexual assault when she shares a cigarette with an officer, as this apparently makes her fair game.

In fact, much of the film’s tension comes not from whether the killer will be captured, but whether the authorities even want to catch him, and if they do, whether they will find a way of releasing him again. Holy Spider, therefore, reveals to the viewer a world in which no woman is safe, and the filmmakers should be applauded for the unapologetic and direct way in which they have dealt with this element of the story.

The film does have more conventional moments of tension and atmosphere, however. The sight of the killer zooming up to women on his motor-bike, briefly bargaining with them and spiriting them off into the night is genuinely chilling, and his attempts to hide the signs of murder from his young wife, including a body rolled into a carpet, are compelling in the most macabre way. On the whole, though, Holy Spider is less interested in providing thrills, and instead focuses on providing an unflinching, deeply unpleasant vision of reality. The prostitutes are sallow, grimy, bruised, their teeth are rotten from smoking crack, and when they are killed, one after another, we are forced to stare at their faces in agonising close up. The effect is truly horrifying, without the sop of style or excitement. These women are real, the filmmakers seem to be saying, society has let them down, and this is what is happening to them. Now look! This is, of course, to the filmmakers’ credit, even if it does make the film near to being unpalatable.

Of course, a film that deals with a subject of this nature should not be delivered as easily digestible entertainment, but the repetitiveness of Holy Spider’s structure – the murders come grimly one after another – and the lack of a tightening sense of drama, left this writer disturbed, depressed, but also, sadly, a bit disengaged.

Holy Spider is a worthy film, but it falls just short as an effective crime drama.

Holy Spider is currently available on Mubi.

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