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Much of the filming was done in Bombay Beach, California. Which is "technically" still part of Niland, California, and many locals were cast as extras in the film.

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No soundstage work here. The entire film was filmed in extreme locations, and primarily outdoors in high heat.

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While it's widely assumed that Suki Waterhouse's character's amputated limbs were achieved digitally, most every shot is an in-camera practical make-up effect. Lots of advance planning and storyboarding was required, in order to pull off all of the shots required in a timely fashion.

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While filming this movie in Niland, California, Keanu Reeves stayed in Brawley, California. He was frequently spotted at various locations in Brawley, including Starbucks, Von's, and Snap Fitness taking pictures with the locals, and reenacting some of his movie roles.

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Most of the extras hired were from Slab City, the same California community Chris McCandless visits in Into The Wild (2007). Most of the "Slabbers" came as is, not needing costumes or make-up.

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The building of the sanatorium is part of a former hospital complex. During WW1 many injured soldiers have been there, including Adolf Hitler.

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The building of the sanatorium is originally located in Beelitz-Heilstätten, an old tuberculosis clinic. The building itself and the area around it have been completely renovated after being a ruin for decades. 750 windows (1,000 sq m of glass), 350 doors, 1,200 sq m of walls and many other things had to be replaced or repaired to restore the original look of the building.

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The scenes in the grotto were planned to be shot in Vienna but the shooting was canceled shortly before the start. The film studio in Babelsberg therefore had to build an entire grotto of 2000 sq m on their own.

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The book being read by the orderly during the sensory deprivation tank scene is " Der Zauberberg" by Thomas Mann. In the book, a young man travels to a sanatorium in the Alps to visit someone and is convinced he is ill and needs to stay.

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The black dog that follows Sally's (Sandra Bullock's character) husband Michael (Mark Feuerstein's character) on the day of his death is no accident. According to several cultural traditions (mainly those of the British isles and Latin America), a sign of impending death can take the form of a black dog.

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The character Jimmy Angelov was originally named Jimmy Hawkins, and was a Texas redneck. The part was rewritten as Eastern European for Goran Visnjic after director Griffin Dunne saw him in Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) and Madonna's "Power of Goodbye" video.

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After bad reactions at a test screening, composer Michael Nyman's score was rejected at the last minute. It was called too European sounding and obtrusive. It was replaced with one by Alan Silvestri. The change was made so late that the soundtrack albums had already been pressed. As a result, the first batch to hit stores all had two suites of themes from Nyman's score. A few weeks later, a new version of the CD, with the exact same ISBN number, was made, replacing Nyman's tracks with music by Silvestri.

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In the scene where they lay Jimmy's dead body on the table to resurrect him, you can hear Nicole Kidman's Australian accent come through when she says, "Sally, watch his balls!"

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The entire house was a specially built architectural shell that was torn down after filming. It was built on rented land, and even the blossoms on the trees are fake - made of silk.

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The name of Sally's botanical shop is Verbena. Verbena is a flowering plant that has long been associated with divine and supernatural forces.

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Aidan Quinn's character, Gary Hallet, has something called heterochromia iridium. Heterochromia (from the Latin "hetero" for different + "chromia" for color) iridium is a harmless condition in which one iris is colored partially or completely different than the other iris. Although it can be rare in humans, there are some celebrities with this condition, such as Kate Bosworth, Mila Kunis, and Jane Seymour to name a few.