The script for the film was fact checked for authenticity by Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen (Give An Hour, PREVENTS) at the request of Jaime Bennington to ensure that the depiction of mental illness throughout the film was not only true to Jaime's own struggles with mental health and mental illness, but also with the original setting of the poem Paranoid: A Chant, which depicts a man struggling with what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) understands as the schizophrenic spectrum and other psychotic conditions.
This adaptation of Paranoid: A Chant (1985) was penned by writer/director Jaime Bennington who found Stephen King's portrayal of mental health to be startlingly accurate, especially when it came down to the expression of delusion, speech, and emotional regulation. Having suffered from schizoid tendencies, and what has been personally described as undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder, since childhood, Jaime found the setting and content of the 100-line poem to be the perfect grounds for self-expression. The film incorporates many elements of their personal struggle with mental health as honestly as possible.
One of the manila envelopes containing the conspiracy that Sic is investigating is labelled 'Finders Keepers' connecting the work to the larger world of Stephen King across all media. Finders Keepers is not only the title of the first novel in the Bill Hodges' trilogy, but is also the name of a P.I. operation established and co-run by both Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney. In the sequel to the novel The Outsider, wherein Bill and Holly come face-to-face with the mythical horror of El Cuco, Holly comes to the understanding that it is her responsibility, and the responsibility of others like her, to face unflinchingly the evils of the world (If It Bleeds, 2020). You are the change in the world that you have been looking for.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021, most of the funding for the film was lost, as was most of the post-production crew. In fact, the film remained in post-production for one whole year, because the entirety of post-production was handled by a single person, Michael Bruce. The final product is near complete, but remains unfinished.
In one of the opening shots of the film the name 'Reg Thorpe' can be seen written on one of the manila envelopes containing the conspiracy that Sic is investigating. This is the name of an author who suffered from his own paranoid delusions in the novella The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet (The Magazine of Fantasy & Fiction, 1984) penned by Stephen King only a year before the 100-line poem Paranoid: A Chant. The ballad of the Flexible Bullet follows an editor, Henry, with Logan's fiction magazine who has been tasked with preparing Reg Thorpe's work for publication only to find that Reg seemingly suffered an episode of total madness. Henry is inflicted with the madness and must come to terms with the life that he has lived, no matter the cost.