Holy Spider

Damn Holy Spider is great.  Based on true events it’s about a serial killer in Iran in the early 2000’s and the female journalist, Arezoo (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), who tries to hunt him down.  He targets sex workers because he believes God has put him on a mission to rid the world of “corrupt” women.

This case doesn’t seem to be a high priority for the police so they’re portrayed as somewhat inept or at the very least lazy.  Arezoo knows how dire and important the situation is so she takes it upon herself to investigate which isn’t easy.  She’s constantly faced with roadblocks from society who don’t take her seriously at best and treat her as sub-human at worst.  When she tries to check into a hotel she’s denied because she’s an unmarried woman and it’s against the moral code for her to have a room by herself.  Or later the chief of police thinks she’s taking her sleuthing too far, backs her into a corner, calls her worthless and all but threatens to rape and/or beat her.  Arezoo pushes on though and in her own way fights against the strict guidelines the government and society have put on her.  She’s a hard hitting tenacious journalist, she smokes when she’s not supposed to, she goes around town unaccompanied at night when she’s not supposed to, she insists on following through with procedure when others want to sidestep, she’s a warrior.

However, that’s only half the story.  The other half is about the killer, Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani).  This is hands down one of the best portrayals of a serial murderer I’ve ever seen because it’s realistic.  Look, Se7en is one of my favorite films and John Doe is a fantastic character but the super villain approach that most pictures take is cartoonish.  Sure, there are some that have existed in the world but the vast majority are not like that.  Saeed isn’t some brooding, plotting, ten-steps-ahead-of-the-cops evil genius.  Yes, he’s an extremely disturbed individual who has an urge to kill but he’s also a family man with an average day job as a builder.  In other words he’s a boring middle-aged dude ninety percent of the time.  He goes to work and has dinner with his wife and kids in the evening and discusses visiting the in-laws and plays soccer with his son and goes on picnics and all the other everyday shit that most folks do.  This throughline extends into his homicides too because they don’t always go as planned and he needs to improvise sometimes causing injury to himself accidentally.  And his wife barely buys his lame made up excuses he employs to cover his tracks.  To feed his narcissistic side though he calls the local newspaper after each attack because he wants the credit and wants the world to understand what he’s doing and gets upset when they don’t carry a cover story about him.  Saeed is a complicated individual who is exceedingly dangerous but also tremendously mundane.  His actions are born out of mediocrity.  He believes he was meant for a greater purpose than to merely work construction and raise a family.  It’s incredible how well the filmmakers get this asshole down.

And if that wasn’t enough the setting the story takes place in is totally unique.  Showing Iran having sex workers and drug addicts (particularly female drug addicts) and a serial killer is something I’ve never thought about or seen before.  Of course it makes perfect sense that these things would exist there because they exist absolutely everywhere but to see it portrayed so matter-of-factly on film is an eye opener.  I’m sure we don’t hear about this stuff in the west because not only are we simply not reporting on it but also because Iran tightly controls the image and information that’s transmitted to the rest of the world.  In many ways we’re all the same and deal with a lot of the same issues and that was fascinating, comforting and depressing all at once to encounter.

Speaking of the government, as I was watching I was thinking “there’s no way they actually filmed this in Iran, they wouldn’t allow their country to be portrayed in such a nuanced and controversial light” and sure enough yea, they filmed in Jordan.  In my opinion the movie does point out how cruel and stubbornly single-minded Iran’s society can be at times but it also humanizes the people.  The filmmakers show a spectrum of citizens who don’t all feel the same way about the morals imposed on them and are just as devastated as anyone else when they learn their child has been horribly murdered.

So you definitely gotta check this one out.  It’s wonderfully made and probably one of the best thrillers ever.  Holy Spider?  Holy shit!  (I have to be the first person who came up with that)