The story is inspired by the classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street," which depicts the denizens of the street slowly becoming crazy after a power failure. In fact, in the film's production notes, Matthew and Annie live on the corner of Maple and Willoughby, alluding to another classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episode, "A Stop At Willoughby".
Another source of inspiration for this movie came from the first episode of the television series, Connections (1978), hosted by a co-Writer of this movie, James Burke. The episode is called The Trigger Effect (1978).
The film's story of a massive blackout got linked to two huge real-life power outages that took place in the Western U.S. in the summer of 1996.
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