Holy Spider
Cinéart | Release Date: October 28, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
9
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyJan 20, 2023
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. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 26, 2022
It’s profoundly compelling, expertly made, and quite intentionally horrifying. Read full review
90
Film ThreatAbhishek SharmaJan 5, 2023
Despite some fictionalization, it is a brutally honest take on the deep-rooted, orthodoxical ideals and their fatal outcomes. Read full review
90
Film ThreatAndy HowellSep 13, 2022
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. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenNov 10, 2022
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. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comGodfrey CheshireOct 28, 2022
Holy Spider’s rendition of this grisly tale is powerful and precise, commendably lacking the sensationalistic tone of some serial killer movies. Read full review
88
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 26, 2022
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. Read full review
83
ColliderNate RichardOct 14, 2022
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. Read full review
80
We Got This CoveredAlejandra MartinezOct 3, 2022
Spider is a heavy watch, and is guaranteed to haunt you long after you leave the theater. Read full review
80
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganMay 26, 2022
Abbasi has made an Iranian noir which, even though it dares to poke around the spiritual capital of Iran with its largest mosque in the world, isn’t an assault on the Iranian government per se, but a crime thriller which shows how far fundamentalist morality can be twisted and how banal the face of evil really is. Read full review
80
SlashfilmRyan LestonMay 26, 2022
Holy Spider shines a light into the murky corners of a society that emboldens its aggressors. In that sense, the film is essential viewing. Even if it is completely devastating. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerMay 26, 2022
It’s far from subtle filmmaking, but Holy Spider is equal parts gripping and disturbing, and not always for the squeamish. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMay 24, 2022
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. Read full review
80
Total FilmNeil SmithMay 23, 2022
An intense and gripping dramatization that, a few liberties apart, does justice to a disturbing true story. Read full review
75
ObserverOliver JonesOct 27, 2022
Holy Spider, a grungy Persian noir from Tehran-born and Copenhagen-based filmmaker Ali Abbasi, celebrates the humanity of that killer’s victims, and of Iranian women in general. It also shines a harsh and unforgiving light on a patriarchal society that refuses to do the same. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineMark HansonSep 9, 2022
Holy Spider trickily manages to bridge the gap between social realism and exploitation cinema in a way that hints at how both are rooted in a similar place of gritty authenticity. Read full review
75
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 26, 2022
If the first half of the film shies away from the cheap thrills of its serial killer story, the pointed banality of its final chapters proves as horrifying this genre ever gets. Read full review
70
VarietyJessica KiangMay 26, 2022
Before a final act dealing with the fascinating social fallout once Saeed’s crimes are known and he becomes, in some quarters including his own household, a hero on a righteous moral crusade, Abbasi’s film hews close to this established template. Read full review
67
The PlaylistJihane BousfihaMay 26, 2022
As a straight-forward thriller, Holy Spider checks off all the boxes that make it an intriguing watch: it maintains a tense tone and has a gripping plot, it transforms into a courtroom drama halfway into its run, and features gritty and stylish visuals. Read full review
60
CineVueChristopher MachellJan 21, 2023
As a neo-noir Holy Spider offers a tightly-woven procedural crime thriller, bolstered by a superb central performance from Amir-Ebrahimi and gorgeous, lurid aesthetics. A steadier hand marshalling its themes and a more disciplined third act might have tipped Abbasi’s third feature into being something truly special: as it stands we are left a very solid, smart and satisfying thriller. Read full review
60
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsJan 19, 2023
The film excels in nasty generic thrills, even if there are some fictional elements of the story which undermine its apparent allyship to the victims. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangNov 3, 2022
The story does build, in its second act, to an unsettlingly persuasive indictment of a society that teaches even its youngest members to hate, condemn and destroy women. But did the movie have to fixate so lovingly on that destruction, or make its chief destroyer so compelling? Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 26, 2022
Abbasi undoubtedly conveys the brutal attitudes which create victimhood. Read full review
58
The Film StageDavid KatzMay 26, 2022
Overall it seems Abbasi got caught between the social righteousness dictates of the “message movie” and pure amorality of what, disturbingly so, often makes for great genre cinema. Read full review
52
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzNov 15, 2022
There are several ways to make a serial killer movie, and in the sometimes compelling and sometimes repellent Holy Spider, filmmaker Ali Abbasi has chosen all of them. At once exploitative and contemplative, thrilling and disgusting, the film makes a bloody mess of itself before coming close to solving its own case. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeJan 21, 2023
It’s a tense, atmospheric piece of film-making but it made me profoundly uncomfortable – and not, I should add, in a good way. There’s a prurience in how the murders are filmed – the camera hungrily scouring the distorted faces of dying women – that borders on dehumanising. Read full review
40
EmpireCatherine BrayJan 17, 2023
A frustrating but fascinating film, made by an evidently talented filmmaker, which never quite manages to resolve the tensions between its apparent moral purpose and the formal flair with which it depicts events it purports to condemn. Read full review
40
The New York TimesDevika GirishOct 27, 2022
Abbasi seems enamored by the contradictions of Hanaei, who was at once an upstanding Muslim, a family man, a pervert and a ruthless killer. But anyone who reads the news, anywhere in the world, will respond to these rote hypocrisies of misogyny with little other than jadedness. Read full review
35
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanOct 27, 2022
Bajestani is believably repellent as someone whose split lives as an obsessive loner and respected family man are disturbingly concordant. And Nadim Carlsen’s gritty camerawork pushes the film’s sense of grim social realism further still, providing a viscerally authentic horror. Abbasi doesn’t seem to realize, though, that he’s creating much of that horror himself. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreOct 28, 2022
It’s not the first film to try to disguise its titillation at violence, in particular against women, with blunt, larger themes. But when those themes are about the structures that enable that violence, the whole enterprise just feels repellent. Read full review
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