Critic Reviews

It’s profoundly compelling, expertly made, and quite intentionally horrifying.

It’s a cracking, effective thriller, powered by uneasiness, and made all the more potent by the recent death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old killed in police custody after being detained for violating the Islamic Republic’s dress code for women.

The brilliance of Holy Spider is how it takes all the gripping, lurid suspense of the serial killer thriller, turns it on its head, and takes it to the next level as symbolic of a corrupted, misogynistic society.

Despite some fictionalization, it is a brutally honest take on the deep-rooted, orthodoxical ideals and their fatal outcomes.

As we begin to follow the trail of journalist Areez Rahimi (Ebrahimi, who received the Best Actress award at Cannes for this role), the film becomes a very effective thriller. Through her, we also experience the country’s entrenched misogyny.

It’s impossible not to see this character and this riveting performance by Amir-Ebrahimi and not think of the brave women protesting their treatment and status right now on the streets of Iran’s cities. Arezoo, like hundreds of thousands of her sisters, persists.

Holy Spider’s rendition of this grisly tale is powerful and precise, commendably lacking the sensationalistic tone of some serial killer movies.

Even with some questionable choices, Holy Spider still packs a powerful punch, particularly in its third act, and one of the most disturbing final scenes you'll see all year that feels like the perfect summation of the past two hours.

An intense and gripping dramatization that, a few liberties apart, does justice to a disturbing true story.

Abbasi offered a brilliantly leftfield perspective on immigration and otherness with his 2018 debut Border, and his follow-up takes no prisoners in his critique of Iranian society’s built-in misogyny and fake piety.