In a 2023 interview with Fangoria, Brandon Cronenberg spoke about how a real-life vacation experience inspired the film: "The film started as a short story just about the first execution, and as I was expanding it into a feature, I kept going back to a vacation I went on about 20 years ago to an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic. It was surreal, because they would bus you in in the middle of the night, so you couldn't see any of the country. They would just drop you in this resort compound, which was in fact surrounded by a razor-wire fence. You couldn't leave, much like in the film, and there was a kind of fake town where you could go shopping. The Chinese restaurant and the horrible discotheque in the movie are both based on that actual resort; the scene with the man on the ATV on the beach being chased by guards actually happened. And then, at the end of the week, they bused you back during the day, and you could see the actual immediate surrounding country, which was very poverty-stricken. There were people living in shacks. That contrast was obviously horrible, but also surreal, because you realized you had never actually entered the country; you were just dropped into this strange pocket of a sort of alternate dimension that had just grown up to become this tacky Disneyland mirror image of reality."
Originally rated NC-17 for "some graphic violence and sexual content". After an unsuccessful appeal for an R, NEON edited the film to get the desired rating. The uncut version was screened at Sundance, while the edited version was released in theaters.
It is rumored that Robert Pattinson was offered the lead role, but passed.
Despite being the rare Canadian movie to not only get a wide release in Canada, but also in the United States, the movie was a huge box office failure.
Made more money in its first week than Crimes of the Future did in its entire theatrical run. The latter film was directed by Brandon Cronenberg's father, David Cronenberg.