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“The Season Isn’t Bright—It’s Dreadful”: Luna Gray Talks Holiday Horror with The Boulet Brothers and David Dastmalchian

Published

4 months ago

December 16, 2025

The Boulet Brothers Holliday of Horrors special comes out today, and before you dig into these delicious morsels, it might be a good idea to get to know our marvelous hosts. I spoke with Dracmorda and Swan Boulet, alongside David Dastmalchian, about winter as horror’s natural home, camp versus terror, creative community, and why monsters sometimes feel safer than reality.

Luna Gray:

The last holiday special did really well, and this one is projected to do extremely well also. Suppose these keep hitting out of the park. Can we expect one of these each year? And if so, are we looking at different holidays? Are we going to get a Valentine’s Day one eventually? Or an Arbor Day—Abhora Day?

Dracmorda Boulet:

I think our wish right now is to do a holiday themed one every year. Particularly a Christmas winter holiday one. I think it would be a fun addition to what we already do and it would give us an opportunity to give some opportunities to up-and-coming filmmakers too, which is something Swan and I are both interested in doing.”

Swanthula Boulet:

“Yeah, and an anthology format is perfect for up-and-coming talent to get them some exposure.”

Luna Gray:

During the summer, slashers reign king. In the winter we have ghost stories and Krampus. Summer or winter—which one is more horror-coded?

Dracmorda Boulet:

“I’m gonna say for me at least winter, because it’s when the day is darkest. You spend more time in the dark than in the light, and it’s cold. I think there’s a creepiness to it. There’s something about the winter and the dark that feels very bleak to me, which is the perfect setting for horror.”

Swanthula Boulet:

“Yeah, I have to agree. And plus the backdrop of like seasonal depression, which I suffer from yearly, I think just adds to that bleakness and it makes a great backdrop for fear.”

Still from The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors – Photo Credit: Shudder

Luna Gray:

You went full-on camp here. Do you think that’s the direction moving forward? Or could we see something that’s full-on terror—or even more glam?

Dracmorda Boulet:

“Well, I think the first one, the Halfway to Halloween, was total 60s camp. Obviously this one, the Holiday of Horrors one, is not like that. And our short in particular I think flexes a different side of us as filmmakers that people haven’t seen before because it’s not campy. And I think—it’s not intended to be.”

Swanthula Boulet:

“Yeah.”

Dracmorda Boulet:

“I think those are two lanes we go in. And I’d love people to see more actual terror and horror from us because it’s not something people have been able to see before. But I also love the other idea of very camp, dark humor–based horror. That’s where Swan and I meet.”

Swanthula Boulet:

“Short answer is I want both. Like, I think we can speak in both tongues. I want to do something legitimately scary that people are like, ‘Oh holy shit, I did not expect that.’ But then of course dark and campy and fun is one of my favorite things. So I want both.”

Luna Gray:

If you ever just made your own Tales from the Crypt, I would adore that.

Dracmorda Boulet:

“I love that idea.”

Swanthula Boulet:

“Me too.”

Luna Gray:

You were about fifteen minutes away from making this a full anthology feature. Was there any discussion about going bigger?

Dracmorda Boulet:

“Yeah, I think that’s where we would like it to go. This was our first time doing it and it was a conscious decision we made with David, who was our partner on this—David Dastmalchian. He was pushing like, ‘Let’s keep it small, let’s keep it an appetizer,’ to stir up interest for the full meal later.”

Swanthula Boulet:

“Our schedules have never been busier. Time and shooting all these different setups became something we had to really consider realistically.”

Luna Gray:

This feels like the first time there’s been a real third presence alongside you onscreen. Was that an adjustment?

Dracmorda Boulet:

“In actual life, he is one of our best friends. We spend a lot of time with him and his family. So it felt very natural.”

Swanthula Boulet:

“Yeah, totally agree. He’s such a good guy and fun and funny. It was easy to get on camera and just riff.”

Luna Gray:

You’re surrounded by iconic horror creators. Does that influence your vision?

Dracmorda Boulet:

“I would say it’s more reassuring. They’re very supportive creatively. They don’t push ideas on us, but we learn a lot from them.”

Swanthula Boulet:

“For the first time in our entire careers, I can say I have a friend group with their own successes that are super supportive and creative. That’s invaluable.”

Luna Gray:

It feels like every season you’re trying to outdo yourselves.

Dracmorda Boulet:

“The budget increases we get go directly on screen. We’re not interested in enriching ourselves personally. We’re interested in expanding what we do and being creatively satisfied.”

Swanthula Boulet:

“Our power is in the toil. We gain our power from the struggle.”

David Dastmalchian on Monsters, Camp, and Horror as Refuge

Luna Gray:

Between cryptozoology and true crime—what do you prefer?

David Dastmalchian:

“Oh, I love cryptozoology. I love monsters. And I think monsters are real. Sometimes they just look like humans. I believe there are good monsters and bad monsters. That’s what I wanted to do with Yeti. Keep them guessing if this is a good yeti or a bad yeti.”

Luna Gray:

You’ve worked in every scale of filmmaking. Why commit so fully to horror?

David Dastmalchian:

“I think the genre for me right now is an opportunity where my 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-year-old self that is still working through some of the exact same fears… now has a playground.”

Luna Gray:

Is the limited runtime of an anthology a constraint—or a gift?

David Dastmalchian:

“The secret to a successful short film is approaching it like a good joke. A setup, and hopefully a slam dunk punchline.”

Luna Gray:

Camp is having a resurgence. How do you feel about that shift?

David Dastmalchian:

“I love that. I think there’s space in horror for the full spectrum.”

Luna Gray:

You’ve been appearing on Shudder a lot lately. Is there more coming?

David Dastmalchian:

“I believe in the power of manifestation… the haunted house cemetery that is Shudder, I’ve been enjoying spending a lot of time building mausoleums and haunted graves. Yes, I have been manifesting a scary story or stories that hopefully I can collaborate with my dear friends at Shudder on.”

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Shudder’s May Is the Best Month They’ve Had in a While.

Published

18 hours ago

April 27, 2026

Luna Gray

Shudder dropped their May 2026 programming slate and it is heavier than most months. The lead is The Terror: Devil in Silver, the long-awaited third installment of AMC’s horror anthology, premiering May 7 with new episodes weekly through June 11. Next up, Tales from the Crypt, all seven seasons, begins streaming May 1 after years off the market. Four new exclusive films fill out the rest of the month.

The Terror: Devil in Silver

The first two seasons of The Terror stand as some of the best horror television of the past decade. Season one sent the crew of HMS Terror on a doomed Arctic voyage in 1845. Season two, Infamy, placed its story inside a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Neither shared a cast nor a plot with the other. Both were exceptional. Season three takes Victor LaValle’s novel and builds it into a six-episode limited series. Dan Stevens plays Pepper, a working-class moving man who lands in a psychiatric hospital through bad luck and a worse temper. What he finds inside is not treatment.

Karyn Kusama, who directed the Yellowjackets pilot and earned an Emmy nomination for it, directs the opening two episodes and serves as co-executive producer. LaValle and Chris Cantwell co-wrote the scripts. Ridley Scott executive produces. The ensemble behind Stevens includes Judith Light, CCH Pounder, Aasif Mandvi, Stephen Root, and Marin Ireland. This is the kind of combination that earns attention before a single frame has aired.

New episodes premiere weekly after May 7.

Tales from the Crypt

Tales from the Crypt ran on HBO from 1989 to 1996. Seven seasons. Ninety-three episodes. Each one a self-contained story hosted by the Crypt Keeper, a wisecracking animated corpse voiced by John Kassir, who closes every episode with a pun only he finds funny.

The show pulled from EC Comics and assembled talent at a level that looks almost unreasonable in retrospect: Brad Pitt, Demi Moore, Christopher Reeve, Catherine O’Hara, and Steve Buscemi in front of the camera. Robert Zemeckis, Tobe Hooper, and William Friedkin behind it. Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Michael J. Fox also directed episodes.

The series has been effectively unavailable to stream for years, tied up in rights complications. It is now on Shudder. Season one drops May 1. Subsequent seasons premiere weekly on Fridays, with the final season 7 arriving June 12. Watch parties run every Friday at 9pm ET. There is no good reason to wait on this one.

The Exclusives

Whistle arrives May 8 and is the exclusive to prioritize. Directed by Corin Hardy, who made The Nun, and starring Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Percy Hynes White, and Nick Frost, it follows high school students who find an ancient Aztec Death Whistle and discover that blowing it summons their future deaths to hunt them down. Totally normal thing to happen.

Heresy lands May 1 and is worth knowing about before it arrives. Director Didier Konings is making his feature debut after years as a concept artist on Stranger Things, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Smothered arrives May 29 as a Shudder Original. It is Indonesian, and it is produced by Joko Anwar, the director behind Satan’s Slaves and Impetigore. That name means something to anyone who has been paying attention to international horror over the past decade. The film follows a micro-painting artist who loses part of his memory in an accident and returns home to find a woman claiming to be his mother.

This Is Not a Test streams May 22. Directed by Adam MacDonald and adapted from Courtney Summers’ 2012 novel, it stars Olivia Holt as a student sheltering in a high school during a zombie outbreak.

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[Exclusive Clip] ‘From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle’

Published

2 days ago

April 26, 2026

Ryan T. Cusick

Audiences are invited to explore one of Vermont’s most mysterious regions in From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle, arriving later this month on streaming platforms and DVD.

The documentary will debut on April 28, 2026, on platforms including Apple TV, Prime Video, and Google Play. DVD editions will be available exclusively through the Small Town Monsters online shop.

Directed by Seth Breedlove, the film continues the company’s exploration of folklore, cryptids, and unexplained phenomena. Breedlove’s previous work includes The Mothman of Point Pleasant, On the Trail of Bigfoot, American Werewolves, and more than two dozen feature-length productions. In total, Small Town Monsters has released more than thirty films, along with investigative programs, web series, books, podcasts, and exclusive membership content.

From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle was made possible through the support of backers from the company’s 2025 Kickstarter campaign.

Set in rural Vermont, the documentary examines the legend of the Bennington Triangle, an area associated with reports of UFOs, ghosts, phantom lights, mysterious creatures, and a series of unexplained disappearances. At the center of the mystery is Glastenbury Mountain, where decades of unanswered questions continue to inspire speculation.

Going beyond folklore and campfire tales, the film asks a chilling question: Why is Glastenbury Mountain so inexplicable, and what happened to those who went missing?

Check out our exclusive clip below.

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This Week in Horror: DC Goes Full Body Horror, A24 Has Its Chainsaw Man, and The Bone Temple Is Finally Yours

Published

4 days ago

April 24, 2026

Luna Gray

Good week. The Clayface trailer dropped and made DC relevant to this website for the first time in a while, A24 put a director on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reimagining, and we got some interviews worth reading. Here is all of it.

Clayface Has a Trailer, and It Is Exactly What You Want

The Clayface trailer landed Wednesday, and it is DC’s first real horror film. Not horror adjacent. Not dark. Horror. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose face gets disfigured by a gangster. He turns to a scientist, played by Naomi Ackie, who transforms his body into clay. Then the body horror starts.

James Watkins directed, which is the right choice. He made Speak No Evil and before that The Woman in Black, and he understands how to make dread feel physical. The screenplay is by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. That combination should tell you everything about the tone they are going for.

A24 Has a Director for Texas Chainsaw Massacre and His Last Film Cost Under a Million Dollars

Deadline confirmed that Curry Barker is writing and directing A24’s reimagining of the 1974 original. Barker made Obsession for under a million dollars. Focus Features paid north of fifteen million to distribute it. It sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. A24 hired him before it even opens, which opens May 15.

Kim Henkel, who co-created the original with Tobe Hooper, is executive producing his own creation’s reimagining. That is either a blessing or a haunting. Probably both.

Astrolatry Is Going to Cannes and We Talked to the Actor Who Faced the Creature

Astrolatry is heading to the Frontières Buyers Showcase on May 16-17. The film has a sentient severed penis that grows into a ten-foot practical creature with spiky teeth. We interviewed star Ethan Daniel Corbett about what it was actually like to act against it. Short answer: genuinely terrifying. Long answer is on the site.

The Bone Temple Is Home

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple hit 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD on Tuesday. If you held out from the digital release in February, now is the time. The 4K presentation is supposed to be great. Extras include audio commentary and a deleted scene. If your gonna watch The Bone Temple, why not watch it where the snacks are better.