What made me interested in Holy Spider is the fact that this film is multinational: the director and the actors are Iranian, the film is produced by a French, a German and two Danish companies, it's in Persian language, and the film is Denmark's candidate to the Best International Feature Film category on the Academy Awards.
I didn't have knowledge of the plot or the story behind the film, I was completely blind (something that's more and more common and I'm proud of). And, unfortunately, I felt the one thing that I shouldn't feel: indifference. And that's because of a creative decision that I will talk deeply from now.
The movie alternates between two plots: the journalist's one (the protagonist, Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) and the killer's one (Mehdi Bajestani). While the investigative one (the journalist) is uninteresting, the characters are not charismatic, the killer's one has the worst approach possible: it's treated almost like a slasher movie.
In a slasher movie, like Friday the 13th, Scream and Bodies Bodies Bodies, it's impossible not to root for at least one character to die. This approach takes the burden of all deaths, and due to what I said on the last sentence, it's not possible to root against Saeed. So, as it's not possible to root against him and it's not possible to root for him either, for obvious reasons, the only feeling left is the already said indifference.
And how Rahimi figures out that Saeed is the killer is something terribly written. Terribly. Maybe 2022's biggest example of narrative convenience. I would delete the whole Saeed's plot and focus entirely on the investigation. It's uninteresting because it's rushed, and focus more on the relationship between Rahimi, the journal and the police than on the investigation itself.
It's a technically good film, the message is fundamental (and made me understand why this movie is competing for an Oscar under the Denmark flag) and the cast is great, but the structural choice, for me, was unforgivable.
I didn't have knowledge of the plot or the story behind the film, I was completely blind (something that's more and more common and I'm proud of). And, unfortunately, I felt the one thing that I shouldn't feel: indifference. And that's because of a creative decision that I will talk deeply from now.
The movie alternates between two plots: the journalist's one (the protagonist, Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) and the killer's one (Mehdi Bajestani). While the investigative one (the journalist) is uninteresting, the characters are not charismatic, the killer's one has the worst approach possible: it's treated almost like a slasher movie.
In a slasher movie, like Friday the 13th, Scream and Bodies Bodies Bodies, it's impossible not to root for at least one character to die. This approach takes the burden of all deaths, and due to what I said on the last sentence, it's not possible to root against Saeed. So, as it's not possible to root against him and it's not possible to root for him either, for obvious reasons, the only feeling left is the already said indifference.
And how Rahimi figures out that Saeed is the killer is something terribly written. Terribly. Maybe 2022's biggest example of narrative convenience. I would delete the whole Saeed's plot and focus entirely on the investigation. It's uninteresting because it's rushed, and focus more on the relationship between Rahimi, the journal and the police than on the investigation itself.
It's a technically good film, the message is fundamental (and made me understand why this movie is competing for an Oscar under the Denmark flag) and the cast is great, but the structural choice, for me, was unforgivable.