One of last year’s most controversial movies barely even gained any attention among mainstream audiences, but it would be an understatement of sizeable proportions to say that Holy Spider stirred up the hornet’s nest and then some.
Co-writer and director Ali Abbasi’s intense serial killer thriller may have won widespread acclaim and landed a Best Actress trophy for star Zar Amir Ebrahimi at the Cannes Film Festival, but the outpouring of anger followed the film around every single corner both at home and abroad.
The aforementioned festival was condemned for recognizing Holy Spider in what was called “an insulting and politically-motivated move,” while protesters stormed the red carpet in an effort to try and raise awareness for femicide – one of the main driving forces behind the story of a serial killer murdering sex workers to dispense their own perverted form of justice.
The Iranian culture minister even lodged a formal protest with the French authorities, while Amir Ebrahimi admitted she’d received roughly 200 death threats since the premiere. If that still wasn’t enough, Holy Spider even got his with a plagiarism claim and accusations that the local rules on censorship had been deliberately circumvented.
The widespread condemnation clearly hasn’t put off the on-demand crowd, though, and it may have even emboldened a few of them to give Holy Spider a whirl, seeing as the uncomfortably riveting exploration into the seedy underbelly of Iranian society has become a Top 10 hit on iTunes in multiple countries around the world this weekend, per FlixPatrol.