Holy Spider

Zar Amir Ebrahimi in Holy Spider

Holy Spider is another solid effort from Ali Abbasi. Saeed (Mahdi Bajestai), a devout builder, cruises the city of Mashhad at night, picking up prostitutes and then murdering them. Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), a female journalist with a more cosmopolitan and secular background, travels to Mashhad to investigate the case. The film juxtaposes Saeed's interactions with family, friends, and victims against Rahimi's pursuit of the perpetrator. The film is neither a whodunit or a whydunit, but manages to build suspense as to whether Saeed will pay for his crimes under Iranian Sharia law. The killer, dubbed the Spider by the press, builds up a following amongst fundamentalists for his "cleansing" activities. Like Travis Bickle, another righteous vigilante, Saeed is one of God's lonely men, intent on his misguided quest.

While not quite as startling in its immediacy as Abbasi's previous film, Border, Holy Spider also boasts outstanding performances and an unwillingness to judge characters no matter where they lie on a political, religious or moral spectrum. Abbasi's human exist on a plane barely above that of the lesser primates. Characters vie for dominance and are constantly sniffing out the intentions of their fellow men, sometimes literally. Whatever bourgeois facades exist in Abbasi's films soon give way to grunge.