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
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
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