‘Holy Spider’ Film Review: Disturbing Serial-Killer Drama Goes to Extremes to Show Violence Against Women

thewrap.com:

unleashed smoke bombs and unrolled a list of murdered women just before the world premiere of Ali Abbasi’s serial-killer drama “Holy Spider.” And if the demonstration’s cause was only too just, its context was all too uncommon, since these protesters were seemingly there to support, not oppose, Abbasi’s violent and disturbing film.

To follow up his Un Certain Regard-winning “Border,” the Iran-born Denmark-based director has burrowed into a chilling bit of true-crime from his native country, reimagining the 2001 case of a religious fanatic who slaughtered 16 young women and using that premise to explore systemic misogyny writ large.

He does so by turning the murder thriller upside down, telling a story where the killer’s identify is never in doubt and his intentions are always crystal clear, and where the greatest source of tension comes from wondering whether anyone in power will lift a finger to stop him.

The killer in this case is middle-aged construction worker Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani). A veteran of the nearly decade long Iraq-Iran war, this family man has settled into a life of dad-malaise.