chekhov’s ice pick:
➽ Erotic thrillers love a truly random object— snow globes, drills (Body Double), ice picks (Basic
Instinct)—as much as they love Michael Douglas. In
Deep Water, Ben Affleck’s character is a snail guy (he’s obsessed with snails; what more is there to say?). Snails don’t murder anybody in the end, though the genre’s history suggested they would.