Spider

Spider (2002) is a psychological thriller directed by David Cronenberg — watch it online on iFILM. Ralph Fiennes plays Dennis Cleg, a deeply withdrawn man who leaves a psychiatric institution after twenty years and moves into a rundown halfway house in London's East End.

Back on the streets where he grew up, Cleg shuffles through the neighbourhood filling a journal with indecipherable notes. His mind keeps looping through a single childhood memory involving his father (Gabriel Byrne) and mother (Miranda Richardson) — but each pass through the past shifts the picture slightly. What actually happened in that house is the question the film refuses to answer easily.

Cronenberg strips the thriller to its bones: muted colours, near-silence, and Fiennes barely speaking above a murmur. Patrick McGrath adapted his own novel. Stream Spider (2002) online on iFILM — a study in fractured memory from one of cinema's most precise directors.