Adapted from a New York Times story by Nathaniel Rich, Dark Waters chronicles the efforts of corporate defense lawyer Mark Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) to hold the company DuPont responsible for knowingly exposing its employees; the residents of Parkersburg, West Virginia; and many others to toxic PFOAs (forever chemicals). Todd Haynes’s decision to shoot the film in the region where the story takes place, with local actors and extras, contributes verisimilitude, and cinematographer Edward Lachman’s use of vintage lenses and a cool yellowish green palette conjures the look of the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, on which Haynes modeled the atmosphere of dread in this chilling true story of corporate malfeasance.