Janeane Garofalo as Dr. Beth Levy Elizabeth Reaser as Athena B.D. Wong as Dr. Bradley Ren Kate Burton as Maureen Letham Amy Sedaris as Toni Isaach de Bankolé as The Professor Michael Gaston as Sheriff Kennelly Mark Margolis as the book store owner Michael Devine as Security Guard Riley G Matthews Jr as Officer #1 Vito Violante as Officer #2 Production Marc Forster's directorial style is artistic, referencing many other films including Vertigo. Details such as the length of a character's trousers and what he is wearing on his feet are significant, too. Forster has spoken of the film's stylistic link to the films of Nicolas Roeg as there are what appear to be continuity mistakes, which are in fact tied into the plot. In an interview with The Collider, Forster confirmed filming took place during late fall 2003, and editing went through several stages, as he took some time off to promote his 2004 fantasy drama film Finding Neverland in order to release the two films separately. The final draft of the movie was finished by January 2005. Reception Box office The film was a massive box office failure, with a domestic gross of $3,626,883 and a foreign gross of $4,856,914, making a total worldwide gross of $8,483,797; it did not come close to making up for its estimated budget of $50,000,000. Critical response Critical reaction to Stay was mixed. At review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 26% of 124 critics positively reviewed the film, and the average rating is 4.66/10. The critical consensus reads: "A muddled brain-teaser, Stay has a solid cast and innovative visuals but little beneath the surface." According to Metacritic, which compiled 29 reviews and calculated an average score of 41 out of 100, the film received "mixed or average reviews". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3½ stars out of four, saying, "The ending is an explanation, but not a solution. For a solution we have to think back through the whole film, and now the visual style becomes a guide. It is an illustration of the way the materials of life can be shaped for the purposes of the moment." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also praised the film, awarding it three stars out of four and saying, "Some people find this twisty and twisted psychological thriller arty and pretentious. I find it arty and provocative." James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave Stay