Where the multiple

Guldbagge winner "Gräns" was pure fantasy, "Holy spider" has its feet firmly anchored in a grim story taken from reality, about the so-called Spider killer, who killed 16 prostituted women in the holy city of Mashhad.

We are invited into his vile business right from the start.

A mother leaves her young child at home, goes out into town to sell her body, and soon gets caught in the spider's web, strangled to death - and this in a long, excruciating shot where the camera doesn't budge an inch from her in terror distorted face.

After that, our representative on the screen enters the plot, the female journalist Rahimi, who comes to Mashhad to do the job that the police do not do.

"Holy spider"

has mostly been praised (lead actor Zar Amir-Ebrahimi won the acting award at Cannes) but has also been criticized for exploiting the victims, but that is barking up the wrong tree.

It's about how you tell the story.

Sure, it's unpleasant, but it would be much worse if the filmmakers

hadn't

depicted the fear of death with a close-up lens.

In this way, the victims do not just become cannon fodder

,

as in most other serial killer films.

Abbasi also does not depict the murders as isolated events

,

but instead exposes the society that shaped the killer's skewed worldview.

In this way, the entire film is a whiplash against a misogynistic regime and social order.

Partly depicted in how Rahimi constantly has to relate to the man's power, on all possible different levels.

Partly in the people's celebration of the murderer's deed, which some believe is a jihad against godless women.

Abbasi devotes

a lot of time to the killer's son and his reactions to his father's actions, thus showing how misogyny is passed down from generation to generation (even by women).

The ending is in that respect deeply depressing, completely in tune with how the mullahs' seemingly cemented power beats down on those who try to change the order of things.

Thus, serial killer suspense and social criticism in the same hard-hitting film noir package.

Not bad.