He promises his girlfriend Christine that they will move away from the city, but he ends up covering a series of grisly murders by a serial killer who calls him telling the reporter that he will kill again.

Hot mornings with sticky weather lead into violent thunderstorms that blow in from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico in the afternoon.

If the script said 3:10 p.m., and the first edition was an hour off the streets, I wanted to know what would be happening.”[2] Coincidentally, when Borsos and his crew arrived at the Herald offices in April 1984, Christopher Bernard Wilder, a man suspected of kidnapping and killing several young women, shot himself in a confrontation with the police at a gas station in New Hampshire.

In order to achieve accuracy for the scenes that take place in the busy newsroom, Borsos used Herald reporters as on-set consultants and extras.

Katzenbach told Foster, “that if he made a film about newspapers it was extremely important not to cut corners when presenting the journalistic aspects.”[2] To that end, the production shot in the actual Herald newsroom between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. as opposed to recreating it on a soundstage.

The actual City of Miami Police Department's SWAT team appeared in a scene where Russell's character enters the house of a victim.

Many interiors were also filmed inside the City of Miami Police Department Headquarters as well as the Richard E. Gerstein Criminal Justice Building.

It also has a few more surprises than the material needed, since Mr. Borsos, who for the most part works in a tense, streamlined style, likes red herrings.

"[5] Jack Kroll in Newsweek wrote "This movie has the weather of Body Heat, the moral stance of Absence of Malice and the perverse plot-angle of Tightrope.

[7] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 64% from 22 reviews with the consensus: "A thriller that plays at social commentary, The Mean Season fumbles with its weightier themes, but does so in a generally watchable way.