By the time The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors wraps, it’s clear the special isn’t just a seasonal detour—it’s a mission statement. This is what happens when artists steeped in monsters, folklore, and performance get to turn the holidays inside out, surrounded by collaborators they trust. For David Dastmalchian, Dracmorda Boulet, and Swanthula Boulet, the project represents both a culmination and a beginning.
“It does feel like since the last time we spoke so much has changed in my life,” Dastmalchian says, reflecting on how quickly this collaboration came together. “I never imagined I would direct something that would be seen by a wide public.”
A major part of that shift, he explains, is finding creative partners who share his obsessions. “So many wonderful things have changed in my life, including the amount of collaboration that I’m getting to do with the monsters that I want to be spending my time with creatively and as friends. And a huge, huge part of that has been the Boulets.”
That admiration is mutual. For the Boulet Brothers, the holiday special arrived on the heels of an intense season of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula: Titans, demanding a rapid pivot from unscripted competition television to tightly controlled horror filmmaking.
“We kind of had to shift quickly from going through the entire season of Titans and then immediately jumping into the holiday special,” Drac explains. “But honestly, the holiday special is kind of the sweet spot for us… Working with scripted actors versus unscripted people is just a total pleasure. It almost felt like a reward.”
The tone of Holiday of Horrors is established immediately with its opening morality tale, Gaudete, written and directed by the Boulet Brothers. It’s a vicious story of a deadbeat father and a grandmother who refuses to stay buried. Rather than stemming from a single joke or personal fear, the Boulets say the idea came from reframing the holidays themselves. “If you look at Christmas traditionally, it’s all about family and warmth,” Drac explains. “But if you spin the diamond and look at it from a different angle… all of these things could be horrible if paired in just the right way.”
That inversion is rooted in folklore as much as shock. “In a lot of traditions, whether it’s undead or vampiric, family members come back from the dead and torment the living,” Swan noted. “It’s sort of the reciprocal opposite of what you think of when you think of togetherness.” Adding another personal layer, the Boulets filmed that segment in their own house, a space with its own unsettling history. “There was a woman who lived here until she died,” Drac said. “It all just sort of mixed together.”
Directing actor Bonnie Aarons in that segment was its own experience. “She doesn’t turn off,” the Boulets laugh. “It’s Bonnie, and that’s it. And she fucking loves it.”
Visually, Holiday of Horrors often favors dread over spectacle, a choice that was deliberate from the start. “Extremely intentional,” Swan said of the pacing and camera work. “For me, the part about horror that I love is fear. It’s not necessarily the gore,” Drac added. They point to Halloween as a key influence. “Before anything really happens, you’re already scared as hell. That’s always been inspiring to us.”\
Still from The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors – Photo Credit: Shudder
That philosophy extends to Dastmalchian’s segment, which casts him as a towering Yeti lurking in a snowy forest—a role that required him to direct while encased in fur and prosthetics. “I always wanted to be Lon Chaney when I was a kid,” he says, clearly delighted by the transformation. “I was just so grateful that I got to be a creature.”
Directing himself, however, came with challenges. “I don’t have the benefit of the language of visual cinema that I want yet,” Dastmalchian admits. “When it came to directing performances and emotion, that all felt really comfortable. But I had to lean on a lot of people.” Those collaborators included his co-writer and co-star Leah Kilpatrick—who built the Yeti costume in her living room—as well as the Boulets themselves. “I was really, really lucky,” he says. “I’d draw pictures and be like, ‘Can it look like this?’ And my DP would say, ‘Okay, I think we can get there.’”
Still from The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors – Photo Credit: Shudder
From the Boulets’ perspective, Dastmalchian never looked like a first-time director. “You really know what you want,” Drac told him. “You’re not indecisive, which is huge. I would not have guessed it was your first time.”
Production across the special was tight and fast, squeezed between larger projects. Dastmalchian recalls heading into the mountains with a skeleton crew to capture his exterior shots. “It felt like my favorite kind of filmmaking,” he says. “Everybody was in on the same mission. There was tension because the sun was setting, but there was so much laughter.” Horror sets, he adds, tend to be joyful places. “You’d look around and see a seven-foot Yeti sitting in a director’s chair at video village.”
One of the special’s most talked-about elements—the stop-motion finale—pushes nostalgia into nightmarish territory. “The first script, I was like, this is nuts,” Drac recalls. “But if you can pull it off…” When the first footage arrived, they were sold. “This is exactly the kind of demented cherry on top that we need.”
Dastmalchian describes receiving each cut with glee. “Every time something would come in, I’d be like, ‘Oh, happy holidays. This is awesome.’” The segment’s Rankin/Bass-inspired texture was intentional. “We all grew up with that stop-motion around Christmas,” Drac said. “We needed that.”
The anthology format also allowed the team to showcase new voices, including writer-director Akela Cooper.
“I pinch myself,” Dastmalchian says. “This was our first Holiday of Horrors special, and Akela Cooper comes out not only to write, but to make her directorial debut.” He credits her segment’s sound design and atmosphere for delivering “an auditory haunting experience” that captures the unease of shared history and family gatherings.
Still from The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors – Photo Credit: Shudder
Dastmalchian, who visited the set with his kids, recalls feeling a deep sense of gratitude watching it come together. “I pinched myself,” he said. “This was our first Holiday of Horrors special, and Akela Cooper comes out not only to write, but also make her directorial debut.”
Swan also highlighted the importance of collaboration with Abora, whose Dragula win helped bring the creature to life. “What I loved was how open Akela was to Abora’s ideas — the visuals, the specifics, even the voice. They really worked together.” That collaboration, the Boulets noted, is key to the spirit of the special. “Abora won the challenge that gave her the opportunity to feature one of her monster creations,” Swan said, “and seeing that monster realized on this scale was incredibly satisfying.”
Still from The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors – Photo Credit: Shudder
With all three creators deeply embedded in comics culture, it’s inevitable that Holiday of Horrors sparks thoughts of a page-to-panel adaptation. The Boulets imagine a monthly anthology with wildly shifting tones and art styles. “No boundary, no guardrail creativity,” they say. Dastmalchian agrees, citing EC Comics as a north star. “Take that tradition and bring in all the boundary-pushing, contemporary, subversive monster humor that we love.”
Looking ahead, none of them shows signs of slowing down. Dastmalchian has a new graphic novel on the way from Z2 called Through and a feature film in post-production titled The Shepherd. The Boulets are juggling a tour in mid-year 2026, a residency at Knott’s Scary Farms, and are in discussions for a future feature. Still, Holiday of Horrors stands out as something special—a reminder that the darkest stories often feel right at home under twinkling lights.
As Dastmalchian explains, the holidays have a way of conjuring “all the shadows of the past” and “all the fears of the future,” especially when family and shared history collide—fertile ground for horror.
You can watch the special starting Tuesday, December 16, 2025, as a Shudder Original, featuring four horror shorts from the Boulet Brothers, David Dastmalchian, Akela Cooper, and Kate Siegel. Stream the anthology on Shudder and AMC+.
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