Spider is a 2002 psychological thriller film produced and directed by David Cronenberg and based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Patrick McGrath, who also wrote the screenplay. The film premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and enjoyed some media buzz; however, it was released in only a few cinemas at the year's end by distributor Sony Pictures Classics. Nonetheless, the film enjoyed much acclaim by critics and especially by Cronenberg enthusiasts. The film garnered a Best Director Award at the Canadian Genie Awards. The stars of the film, Ralph Fiennes and particularly Miranda Richardson, received several awards for their work in the film. Plot Dennis Cleg is a schizophrenic man who has just been released from a mental institution. Known as "Spider", he is given a room in a halfway house catering to mentally disturbed people which is run by unrelenting landlady Mrs. Wilkinson. While in his new abode, Spider starts piecing together his memory of an apparently fateful childhood event. Roaming the nearby derelict urban area and the local canal, Spider starts to relive a period of his childhood in 1950s London with his mother Mrs. Cleg and unfaithful father Bill. Here, Spider witnesses Bill murder his mother by hitting her on the head with a spade with the passive support of his mistress, a prostitute named Yvonne. Much to Spider's horror, she moves into the house and is presented as his "mother". Now grown up, Spider begins seeing Mrs. Wilkinson turn into Yvonne. He responds by using strands of yarn to form a web-like construction in his room, and steals Wilkinson's keys to gain access to different rooms. Meanwhile, Spider begins to relive a memory from childhood where he kills Yvonne by using a similar web-like pulley mechanism to turn on the gas in the kitchen. However, it appears to show Mrs. Cleg lying dead instead, implying it really was his mother all along, and Yvonne was actually a delusion. Spider comes to this realization when he sneaks late one night into Mrs. Wilkinson's room, still seeing her alternatively as the mistress, and appears ready to kill her, but backs away after she turns back to normal. He is then taken back to the asylum after she reports him. Cast Production During a Q&A session at the Kodak Lecture Series in May 2005, Cronenberg revealed that neither he, Fiennes, Richardson, nor the producers