"This is a small community that is freshly painted over but when you scratch the paint, you find the termites and find out what goes on underneath," explains director Nutter. "This town had a series of tragedies and they turned to someone for answers. That someone happened to be Caldicott. This kind of polarization, where people feel they have no choice and so take extreme positions and resort to drastic measures, is at the heart of the film."
"He's a man without a conscious," adds Bruce Greenwood, who portrays Caldicott. "He believes that the end justifies the means, and in the pursuit of his scientific goal, he doesn't flinch at leaving many damaged people in his wake."
"Caldicott believes in better living through science, Marsden adds, "and he's willing to screw with people's miinds to get the results he believes possible. In some ways, this movie is a projection of our current trend where you can buy enlightenment in a weekend seminar. It's not that easy."
Caldicott has been tweaking the brains of these kids to get the good grades and be the perfect teenagers," says Holmes, "but there's something not right about them. They have a real short fuse."
Production began on January 19 and shot for three months on location in Vancouver, B.C., wrapping on March 16, 1998.