Excellent. Lots of symbolism and a very well-made film which twists and turns and looks beautiful, though the ending is a bit disappointing.

Consistently interesting due to its heavy use of symbolism and building tension. Jeroen Krabbé is excellent as the protagonist who slowly comes to realise that there may be a spider's web being spun around him. Verhoeven show again and again how he is willing to take big chances with his craft, his ideas and his subject matter. Here he succeeds brilliantly. One of the most original movie autheurs working in the 80s.

Terrible nonsense. Jeroen Krabbe is solid as expected, the rest of the cast embarrassing - especially Renée Soutendijk as the supposed serial husband killer. There are a handful of nice ideas and some interesting dream sequences, but the layer upon layer of overt, unsubtle symbolic imagery gets to the point of comedy and then boredom, as for the meaning of the title how can the fourth victim be the fourth man when he's not married to the "spider" and isn't killed by her?