Damien Echols, whose real life story inspires Rectify, compared Daniel Holden's reaction to being release to his experience as such: "Another thing McKinnon captures is the shock and trauma of someone just released after nearly 20 years on death row. The main character falls asleep on the ride home from the prison, and then falls asleep again as his sister drives him around to see how the town has changed. When I first walked off of death row I was so deeply in shock and traumatized that for nearly three months I couldn't watch a movie, a television show, read a book, or take a car ride without falling into a deep, dark sleep that didn't seem to refresh me much when I awakened. All I wanted to do was go out and walk the streets of New York City at all hours of the day and night. I would walk until I was so exhausted I'd stumble over my own feet like a drunk - and I was drunk. I was drunk on the river of human energy that flowed all around me, over me, and through me. The human interaction and energy I'd been starved of for almost 20 years."
