10 Horror Movies That Put Insane Effort Into Details Nobody Noticed
9. It Follows - A Ball Foreshadows All The Infections
“The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons" wrote Dostoyevsky. Concurrently, horror should be representative of current social and political zeitgeist. The thematic links between sexually transmitted diseases and the relentless, anonymous antagonist of It Follows are not hard to see, in fact the film is explicit about this.
Set in Detroit and strangely absent of an exact time setting, It Follows depicts an urban wasteland, purely populated by adolescents, who seem to have been set adrift without guidance or leadership. The kids here have to fend entirely for themselves, in a world now beset with not only a faceless threat, but one that is capable of being practically anyone and possibly everyone.
The missable detail here is not limited to sexual threats or a Lord Of The Flies-esque state of lawlessness but that a ball appears to follow the 'disease' throughout the movie.
Seemingly, this random object seems to signify death (not unlike the oranges in The Godfather). For instance, not long after Jay becomes infected, a ball hits her window; Hugh has a picture of himself holding a ball and immediately after Jay and Greg sleep together, a ball bounces from her house towards his. If those can be chalked up to coincidence, as Jay watches Gregg dying, the design on her t-shirt also shows a girl holding a ball.