When referring to the no musical score nature of the film, director Chris Nash stated that he wanted the film to be a "blank canvas", and to be as "stark and objective" as possible. He didn't want to influence the audience by any type of music.
In a 2024 interview with Points of Reviews, Chris Nash spoke about the reason for doing a substantial reshoot: "I would say that we reshot 70% of the film. That number fluctuates depending on my mood, but it's around 70%. We did four weeks of shooting in a completely different location with a different lead actor who succumbed to a medical problem a week and a half into the production. So we had to replace our main "monster man" actor. He's in a costume the entire film, so I thought if we could find somebody the same size, same build, roughly, then we could get away with making the change.
But there are so many important things about performance. How they carry themselves, the gait of their walk, the weight of their footfalls; all of that mattered so much. We only realized how much that mattered once we did a rough assembly of those first four weeks and could see the stark differences. They're almost imperceptible until you realize that this is really the entire movie. It's just watching somebody walk and move and studying their behavior. But that was only one of the reasons we felt it necessary to pick up production and start again completely.
Another, perhaps more selfish, reason was that I'd always envisioned this to be shot in Northern Ontario using that wilderness. That's where I'm from, and where we were initially shooting didn't have the same feeling.
The trees didn't feel the same. Everything felt different and too uncanny for what I wanted. Having the opportunity to reshoot, I was adamant with my producing partners that I would love to return to my hometown and call in every favor I could from every friend and family member. It's not like we had the same budget to work with to get it all done, and luckily, a lot of our crew stuck with us. A lot of our actors stuck with us, and we managed to pull it all together.
There is one shot from the original film. It's a five or six-second shot that was included, and it's the most expensive shot in the film by far."
Nash has said he chose to shoot the film in Academy ratio because "that's how I watched all the slashers as a kid on VHS... That's the slasher aspect ratio."
Director Chris Nash describes the film as a "test of patience", adding that horror movies often reward that patience to the audience.
Filming began in central Ontario, Canada, near the Kawartha Lakes area, before moving to Algoma district in Ontario, in 2021. It released three years later, in January of 2024.