Holy spider

A journalist descends into the dark underbelly of the Iranian holy city of Mashhad as she investigates the serial killings of sex workers by the so called "Spider Killer", who believes he is... A journalist descends into the dark underbelly of the Iranian holy city of Mashhad as she investigates the serial killings of sex workers by the so called "Spider Killer", who believes he is cleansing the streets of sinners. A journalist descends into the dark underbelly of the Iranian holy city of Mashhad as she investigates the serial killings of sex workers by the so called "Spider Killer", who believes he is cleansing the streets of sinners.

A married father of three who dumped all of his victims at the same place after suffocating many of them in the living room of his family’s house, Hanaei was an amateur to the core. The only reason he was able to keep up the slaughter for so long is that nobody was particularly determined to catch him. In a holy city home to both the world’s largest mosque as well as a highly visible prostitution industry, the criminal police have little incentive to solve a problem that the religious police would sooner categorize as a solution. If the blunt and unfussy first hour of “Holy Spider” elides much of the hair-raising suspense that movies have conditioned us to expect from such awful stories (along with most of the heightened genre weirdness that “ “Holy Spider” is at its most venomous once it fully constructs its web — ditching the neon green and synth-noir trappings of its first half in favor of a more clinical vibe — but the film establishes a number of crucial threads through the process of spinning it. The first is Hanaei himself, whose identity as the “Spider Killer” is revealed almost immediately so that Abbasi is free to complicate it several times over. Hanaei is a devout Muslim who prays at the massive Imam Reza Shrine. He’s a faithful husband, even if his wife is young enough to be his daughter and looks at him with a certain degree of fear. He’s a loving father, whose teenage son worships him like an idol, and whose sweet little daughter laughs when he bounces her o...

H oly Spider is a serial killer procedural which takes the procedure further than usual, despite its deployment of some pretty familiar tropes. It goes beyond the denouement and the arrest, extending the murderer’s conceited theatre of cruelty to the police cell, the law courts and the media arena. This is a fictionalised true-crime drama-thriller based on Iranian construction worker Saeed Hanaei, nicknamed “Spider Killer” in the press, who in 2001 was arrested for the murder of 16 sex workers in the northeastern city of Mashad, and became a folk hero to the religious right for claiming to be on a holy mission to cleanse the city of prostitution. (Hanaei has already been the subject of a documentary and another feature film.) Well, not exactly. Despite some intimate vignettes showing the women’s grim existences and a genuinely moving moment when the father of one bursts into tears at the thought of his daughter’s wasted life, this sticks to a rather Hollywoodised, but certainly very effective killer-centric script. We see Saeed himself, played by Mehdi Bajestani, an angry and conflicted building-site worker who in one scene is shown taking a fearsome sledgehammer to a wall. He is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and despises himself for not having been more of a hero, or a martyr. But the woman who takes centre stage is a fictional investigative journalist from Tehran, Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) who shows up in Mashad wanting to crack this long-running case, and...

Photo: Utopia By design, Holy Spider is relentless. Director and co-writer Ali Abbasi’s film lets the prowling of its serial killer set the rhythm: A pattern emerges after the first time we see Iran-Iraq War veteran Saeed Azimi (Mehdi Bajestani) murder a sex worker in the holy city of Mashhad. The camera zooms alongside Saeed, nicknamed the Spider Killer, as he hops on his motorcycle and drives loops around the city’s central Ab Square. Composer Martin Dirkov’s score shifts into an ominous barrage of synths and sonic shards. The frame fills with the faces of these women, their hijabs pushed back and their hair exposed, their lipstick bold and dark, and their expressions somewhere between sneers and surrender. We know what will happen to them — what Saeed will do to them — and Abbasi doesn’t let us look away. Holy Spider argues that the cyclical nature of misogyny makes these kinds of crimes inevitable. That finger-pointing is at its most precise and most upsetting in the film’s final moments. Abbasi’s film, though fictionalized, adapts many elements from director Maziar Bahari’s 2003 documentary about the case, And Along Came a Spider. That 54-minute film Holy Spider. We also hear from journalist Roya Karimi, who covered Hanaei’s trial and speaks in the documentary about the man’s rigidity and forthrightness, and how he acted in court “as if he’d just returned from a pilgrimage.” In real life, when Hanaei was murdering women from 2000 to 2001 and dumping their bodies in st...

It's an eerie coincidence that this scene early in It's been charged that misogyny is at the heart of the Islamic Republic’s rules that women must cover their hair in public, and the same issue is central to “Holy Spider.” The film dramatizes the true story of a serial killer who murdered 16 prostitutes in 2000-2001. Saeed Hanaei was a laborer and Iran-Iraq War veteran who reportedly began his crime spree when someone mistook his wife for a prostitute. During and after his rampage, he claimed he had God on his side, saying he was on a jihad to rid Mashhad’s streets of its most corrupt elements. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of his story was that the killer became a hero to some before his execution. “Holy Spider”’s rendition of this grisly tale is powerful and precise, commendably lacking the sensationalistic tone of some serial killer movies. Abbasi constructs his narrative in three main strands, one following Saeed ( From a sociopolitical perspective, the third strand is especially fascinating. While there was a female reporter named Roya Karimi who covered the Spider Killer story—the name came from the supposition that he lured victims into his deadly web—Rahimi is Abbasi’s creation, and she’s a striking and memorable character, not just for her intrepid, methodical way of pursuing the story but also for her self-possessed way of dealing with the men she encounters. One is a reporter who shares information with her (he has tapes of the calls the killer made to him ...

Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that Holy Spider is a thriller, in Persian with subtitles, about an Iranian serial killer of sex workers and is based on real events. Violence includes close-ups of murder victims' faces and necks as they are strangled to death, plus a close-up of the perpetrator's face as he's executed… some People shouldn't take the law into their own hands or pass judgment on the value of others' lives. Instead of condemning people for what they do to survive, we as a society should help make their lives better so they don't have to break the law just to get by. Provides food for thought about capital punishment and whether it brings justice or not. • Positive Role Models some Arezoo is a positive model of perseverance and empathy. She doesn't stop, even at great risk to her own life, until she finds the serial killer. She thinks that instead of condemning sex workers and drug addicts, people should help them out of their miserable circumstances. She sees them as individuals who deserve a chance at a good life. Saeed is a serial killer motivated by religious fervor. Other characters range from positive, supportive models to people who are morally corrupt and part of a conspiracy to ensure "justice" keeps being dispensed to sinners. • Diverse Representations Several close-ups of murder victims' faces as they are strangled to death, plus a close-up of the perpetrator's face as he's executed by strangulation from hanging. A couple of fights show a ...

This film's plot summary may be Please ( May 2023) ( Journalist Arezoo Rahimi arrives in the Iranian holy city of Rahimi is depicted as self-directed, sharp in her analysis of evidence, and genuinely concerned about the fate of the murder victims. She arrives in the city alone and must navigate various restrictions placed on women in the holy city. She forms an investigative relationship with a male journalist, Sharifi, who offers support, but her dealings with local police are mostly filled with dismissiveness and stonewalling. Sharifi has been in contact with the killer, having been chosen by Azimi as a kind of publicist. Sharifi's recordings and recollections offer Rahimi insight into the motive for murder: Azimi is mercurial, by turns friendly and then explosive, excoriating the prostitutes as corrupt and filthy. He claims to be cleansing the city in the name of Cultural misogyny pervades Rahimi's interactions with men during her investigation. A uniformed detective, Rostami, initially seems affable before making an unwanted pass and then ridiculing Rahimi's character when rebuffed. A powerful local cleric similarly suggests that a loose reputation precedes her. Rahimi explains to Sharifi that these insinuations are themselves the product of an unwanted advance—a journalistic supervisor in Tehran demanded after-work contact with Rahimi to further her career. Her position as an outsider informs Rahimi's emotionally difficult interactions with victims' families and, in o...