Holy Spider, from Iran, by Way of Denmark

Saeed Hanaei was sort of like Iran’s version of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo (a.k.a. “Citizen X,” who continued to kill over decades, because the authorities deliberately ignored evidence linking his murders). Their prolific slayings exposed the corruption and incompetence of the respective regimes. In fact, the Islamist authorities were reluctant to stop the real-life Hanaei, for ideological reasons, because he only targeted “fallen” women working on the streets of Mashhad, the spiritual capitol of Shia Islam. Rather logically, it will be a woman journalist who exposes him in Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Just checking into a hotel in Mashhad is an ordeal for Rahimi, since she is a single woman, unaccompanied by a man. She has to pull her journalist credentials, threatening a scandal in the papers. Rahimi is here to investigate the “Spider Killer,” since the local authorities clearly lack a sense of urgency.

To make matters worse, Rahimi’s bad reputation (quite scandalously, she filed a sexual harassment complaint against her former boss) has followed her to Mashhad. Nevertheless, Sharifi, the cautious local reporter who has received boasted calls from the killer agrees to help her investigation. However, winning the trust of the city’s prostitutes will be very difficult. Yet, they keep coming home with the murderous Hanaei, because that is what their business requires.

Holy Spider is Columbo-like in the sense that it reveals Hanaei’s identity as the killer right from the start. Abbasi also vividly depicts in his brutality, in stark, uncompromising terms. The misogyny of Iranian society also comes through loud and clear, especially during a scene in which Rahimi barely escapes an attempted sexual assault, at the hands of Mashhad’s police chief. For a so-called “holy city,” Mashhad looks like a pervasively predatory environment.

Yet, the investigation is only half the story. The rest of the film consists of the trial, wherein Hanaei tries to ride his public popularity to an acquittal, on the grounds his murders were theologically justified. Much to Rahimi’s concern and disgust, there is a very real chance Hanaei could pull it off.

For obvious reasons, it was Denmark that selected the Danish-based, Iranian-born Abbasi’s film as its International Oscar submission, rather than Iran. However, Abbasi filmed on location in Jordan, which doubles convincingly for the grim, dark streets of Mashhad (at least for viewers who have never visited, but have seen a number of Iranian films).

Holy Spider is definitely a visceral indictment of institutionalized injustice, intolerance, and sexism in contemporary Iranian society. However, it is also a potent hybrid serial killer thriller and courtroom drama. Indeed, the uniquely perverse aspects of Iran’s justice system greatly complicate the prosecution and consequently generate greater suspense than an equivalent case ever could, in just about any other jurisdiction.

In a performance of great personal courage (considering the possibility of subsequent reprisals), established Persian thesp Mehdi Bajestani is frighteningly intense as Hanaei. It is not the physical violence that makes him such a monster. It is his absolutely conviction in the righteousness of his murders.

SBIFF ’20: The Night

Airbnb horror is a relatively new phenomenon, but it follows squarely in the tradition of hotel horror. Some of the genre’s best have been set in hotels and motels, like The Shining, the Psycho franchise, and Horror Hotel, starring the great Sir Christopher Lee. Maybe we our just intuitively unsettled by the experience of temporarily making your home in a strange room, knowing full well people you’ve never met also have the key. Try to sleep tight. An expat Iranian couple definitely won’t when they check into a hotel with a 100% vacancy rate and a check-out time of maybe never in Kourosh Ahari’s The Night, which had its world premiere at the 2020 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Babak and Neda’s marriage suffered while they were apart, but they have tried to make up for lost time after she joined him in America. They both take pride and delight in their baby, but there is still tension between them that always gets aggravated when Babak drinks. This is one of those nights (boy, is it ever). He is too proud to crash with their friends after the dinner party winds down, but Babak agrees to stop at a hotel when he gets a little too woozy during the drive back. Unfortunately, fate directs them to the wrong hotel.

It certainly is quiet, but that is because they are the only ones staying there. Yet, they are plagued by a mysterious prankster pounding on their door and crashing sounds coming from above the ceiling. Then weird time and spatial things start happening. They soon try to leave, but the hotel won’t let them.

It turns out Persian horror is a real thing and it is consistently good. Ana Lily Amanpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow are both superior films, but The Night can still hang in their company. Arguably, it could probably also be classified as “elevated horror” or “post-horror,” or whatever critics are trying to call films like Eggers’ The Witch these days, but Ahari’s slow build eventually reaches some pretty malevolent and surreal heights.

Tehran Taboo: Sex and the Single Revolutionary Islamic Girl

It is like an underground Sex and the City, but consenting adults run the risk of arrest and torture at the hands of the morality police. Tehran is just as cosmopolitan and randy as any major city, but Islamist hypocrisy and misogyny has a poisonous effect on human relationships. Three middle class urban women try to negotiate the sexually charged terrain of the capital city in Ali Soozandeh’s bold animated feature, Tehran Taboo (trailer here), which opens at Film Forum on Valentine’s Day.

Pari must work as a prostitute to survive, because her incarcerated husband refuses to consent to a divorce or sign her employment applications. Ironically, Pari and scores of her colleagues walk the streets fairly openly, because the morality police prefers to crack down on couples holding hands. The Islamic Court judge will not grant her a divorce without the acquiescence of her deadbeat husband, but he offers to make her his kept woman instead.

As part of the deal, Pari and her young mute son Elias move into an upscale flat owned by the upstanding jurist. Though Pari is cagey about her own circumstances, she quickly befriends Sara, the pregnant wife of Mohsen, an entitled banker. She yearns to pursue a career of her own, but he categorically forbids it, using the pregnancy and her previous miscarriages as an excuse.

Meanwhile, electronica DJ Babak finds himself living the longest, most awkward morning after, when his hook-up from the previous night insists he fund her hymen reconstruction surgery. It seems Donya has a very large, possibly mobbed-up fiancé, who is expecting to marry a virgin.

Eventually, Pari will take a big sisterly interest in both Donya and Babak, but unfortunately, she can mostly offer moral support, rather than the financial kind. Nevertheless, Soozandeh brings his cast together in a convincingly organic manner, rather than contriving ways for their paths to cross. At various times, each woman is both a victim and a schemer, but the deck is always stacked against them.

The Iranian-born, Germany-based Soozandeh, who helped animate segments of the remarkable documentary The Green Wave, is shockingly frank, at least by Iranian standards. To put it in perspective, the film starts with Pari trying to perform a sex act often denoted by two letters on a flaccid cabbie, with the silently jaded Elias sitting in the back seat. Yet, through the use a child’s still somewhat innocent perspective, Soozandeh consciously embraces the tradition of classic Persian cinema.

Nevertheless, there is no denying the predatory and base nature of the men exploiting Pari, Sara, and Donya. By forcing sexual relations underground and under the table, they become effectively severed from the strictures of respectable society. In effect, only the law of the jungle applies.

Yet, nobody is entirely a victim (especially not Pari), because Soozandeh has drawn such distinctive and multi-dimensional characters. There are not merely symbols, they are women with stories to tell (or rather try to keep secret). You would think the animation would provide a protective layer between the film’s provocative subject matter and the contributing cast, but Soozandeh’s use of rotoscoping techniques means there are indeed bravely identifiable performances to be seen throughout Taboo. Even through the transformative animation, Elmira Rafizadeh’s work as Pari is remarkably earthy and gutsy, while Zahra Amir Ebrahimi is quietly devastating as Sara. Yet, it is the silent indicting gaze of Bilal Yasar’s Elias that will truly haunt viewers.

Soozandeh largely focuses on sexual/gender iniquities, but he does not ignore other forms of institutionalized injustice, such as the pointless censorship of Babak’s music and the shocking sight of bodies swaying from the gallows at a public execution. Soozandeh holds a rotoscoped mirror up to contemporary Iran and forces viewers to give it a long, hard look. The result is a viscerally powerful experience that both seduces and horrifies. It is an outstanding film, definitely in the tradition of Persepolis and The Breadwinner, but clearly intended for mature audiences. Very highly recommended, Tehran Taboo opens this Wednesday (2/14) in New York, at Film Forum. Happy Valentine’s Day.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: A Persian Vampire Stalks Bad City

This vampire wears a chador rather than a cape. She is clearly not an Anne Rice kind of vampire, but you will still find plenty of vice in Bad City, where she stalks her victims. Ana Lily Amirpour finally delivers the Iranian existential rock & roll vampire western the world has been waiting for with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

The dialogue is Persian, but it was shot in a California boom-and-bust oil town that easily passes for a lawless provincial corner of Iran. Although not explicitly political, there is no way the regime would ever cotton to a depiction of Iranian society rife with prostitutes, pimps, pushers, and junkies (frankly, they are just no fun whatsoever). Of course, this seedy environment makes a perfect hunting ground for “the Girl,” who prowls through Bad City’s dark streets late at night on her skate board.

Like an old school E.C. Comics blood-sucker, the Girl generally bites those who have it coming, such as “the Pimp,” who has been hassling “the Persian James Dean” over his junkie father’s debts. Or at least he had been. Yet, the Girl somehow develops a friendship with “the Prostitute” despite their very different temperaments. However, it is her halting mutual attraction to the Persian James Dean that really challenges her choice of undead lifestyle.

AGWHAAN sounds absolutely crazy on paper and indeed in many ways it is, but it is an art film through-and-through rather than a cult midnight movie. Amirpour’s pacing is slow and deliberate, in a seductive kind of way. If audiences are not careful, Bad City will anesthetize them. Fortunately, the driving alt rock-rockabilly soundtrack supplies plenty of aural caffeine (this is a case where a soundtrack album could easily out-perform the source film).

Regardless, viewers should stick with AGWHAAN, because it is a truly unique cinematic experience, starting with Lyle Vincent’s gobsmackingly arresting black-and-white cinematography. Arguably, the film is stylistically most closely akin to the work of Bruce Weber (best known for directing Calvin Klein commercials and the Chet Baker doc Let’s Get Lost).

AGWHAAN is the sort of film that washes over you, yet it still heralds the arrival of a major star in Sheila Vand. As the Girl, she gives a quiet but deeply expressive performance. Somehow she is able to look exquisitely vulnerable and eerily sinister at the same time, which is quite a trick. Likewise, Mozhan Marnò defies all clichés with her sensitive work as the prostitute.

There is something wonderfully subversive about a delicate looking lady vampire wreaking havoc on Iran’s low life men. Who wouldn’t love to see her take the bite to the oppressive theocrats in a sequel? A rich feast for eyes and ears, it is completely unlike any other vampire movie you have previously seen. Highly recommended for fans of ambitious genre film and Persian cinema, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night opens this Friday (11/21) in New York at the IFC Center.