All the contortionist vampires were hired performers from live shows like Cirque du Soleil. This was a way to not only show a different type of vampire, but provide jobs for performers who were out of work due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
When Bud and Big John first walk into the union, an employee over the intercom says, "J.J. Perry to the trade counter". J.J. Perry is the director of this movie.
In a 2022 interview on the Roger Ebert website, J.J. Perry spoke about a specific shooting technique used in the film: "...in the grandma fight there's four performers. There's the actress, then there's a stunt double, then there's a fight double, then there's a contortion double. So there were four ladies doing that performance. And the contortion work, when we're throwing them on the table and folding them in half, we're not really doing that. We're starting them in half and then pulling them out in a wire and playing it in reverse with a magic camera speed that I can't tell you unless you give me a bunch of money... I don't know if I invented using contortionists with reverse photography, but I may be the first one to put it in a movie and weaponize it and reaction-ize it. It kind of came to be when I was doing a movie in Hungary called Spectral (2016), and I'm dyslexic, I have to see things both directions. I was editing a very flexible girl doing a reaction and I played it in reverse and she kind of folded the wrong way, and it looked better in reverse than it does in forward. And then I said, 'If I had a contortionist ...' and I pitched that to every director I've worked with since 2013, and no one wanted to do it. They're like, 'I don't get it, doesn't make sense!' So I'm grateful that nobody else wanted to do it and it ended up in 'Day Shift.'"
Originally, the Nazarian Brothers were going to be played by Scott Adkins and Romanian actor Liviu Covalschi, but Covalschi had to turn down the role due to other filming commitments.