Inspired by the true story of Saeed Hanaei, an Iranian serial killer known as Said Hanai.

A series of murders began in 2000 and ended in 2001; the affected area was the sacred city of Mashhad, about 1000 km from Tehran, home to an important Shiite shrine and a thriving religious pilgrimage destination.

The victims were prostitutes whom the killer would pick up from the streets on his scooter and bring to his house while his family was away for prayer; he would strangle them with their own scarves.

He dumped the bodies on the sides of roads or in sewers, wrapped in their chadors. The press referred to them as "the Spider Murders" because the killer lured women like spiders lure prey.

Hanaei seemed unsuspected: he was 39 years old, a simple construction worker, very devoted to his religion, married with children.

For him, prostitutes were "sinful beings, morally corrupt and corrupting, a waste of blood" and he believed he had to clean up the city. His was "a personal crusade for the love of God and for the protection of religion."

The director decided to tell this story without exaggeration; while the real killer raped the women before strangling them, Abbasi overlooks this ferocious detail: however, he does not hesitate to show the violent murders, starting from the first scene of the film.

He accompanies the fiction with the involvement of a journalist who decides to track down the killer, neglected by official investigations, as she wants to focus, successfully, on the prevailing culture in the country. Some fundamentalist groups and Islamic militants considered the killer as "a hero defending the city from a growing social plague"; even his 14-year-old son, Alì, at the time, said that if his father had died, he would have been replaced by other killers, and he, feeling proud, could have continued his father's operation.

The scene in which the boy mimics his parent's actions during the murders is unforgettable, as if he wanted to reconstruct a tutorial for the memory of future generations.

The Iranian director, naturalized Danish, creates his second little gem after the unforgettable "Border" from 2018, which was already awarded at Cannes.

Here too, the theme of guilt, the ethical choice of border creatures, reappears on the scene, competing at the 75th festival of the French Riviera.

A merciless portrait, built through impeccable performances, reflects a society where common thinking is that of those who judge but above all improperly condemn in the name and by the hand of God.

A dirty, clear, terribly violent, merciless film, yet hypnotic: the prostitutes are the scapegoats of a vision that separates good from evil, the good from the bad, the just from the unjust, and sin from atonement.

The source of evil, the females, must be eliminated, not their clients, brutal rapists and murderers, who are considered victims, even heroes.

Abbasi focuses on the motive and context and does so with a merciless yet indulgent gaze, never losing sight of the narrative's focus, which centers on the mysterious and confused wickedness completely devoted to "purification."

The title encapsulates the concept, the concentrate, the essence of the film: that "holy" (Holy) is not the spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, but the assassin nicknamed Spider, who sacrifices himself for devotion and dedication, as related to divinity: an "assassin saint" in short, who in his paranoia appeals to and "dedicates himself to God."

Unexplainably overlooked, especially considering the relevance of the themes concerning the tormented Iranian reality, even more so today, dominated by Islamic and, not only, macho culture, it strikes directly, opening an inevitable space for reflection.

03-May-2023 by Beatrice