Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentDanish-Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s boundary-pushing serial killer thriller “Holy Spider has been acquired by U.S.
sales and distribution company Utopia for North America.Based on a real Iranian crime case, “Holy Spider” – which made a major splash when it premiered in the Cannes competition on Sunday – is about a family man named Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani) who becomes a serial killer as he embarks on his own religious quest to “cleanse” the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of street prostitutes.
Pic chronicles a killing spree in the streets of Mashhad, where 16 prostitutes were found dead from 2000 to 2001. A local journalist, Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi), is trying to crack the case as she grows frustrated by the police’s apathy toward finding the murderer.
But in one of many twists in this drama, the identity of the serial killer is revealed early on — he’s a war veteran, a seemingly normal family man who spends his nights picking up women on his motorcycle and brutally strangling them in his home as a religious cleansing ritual.
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