"The whole conceit of the movie is Poe sort of gets wrapped up in one of his own stories, which kind of speaks to all the different mashups and genres he was playing with and creating," says Cusack. "One of the themes that was so great about him is he writes about the thin line, that twilight between insanity, reality and fantasy and also between waking and dreaming and life and death. He had such a romance with the abyss."