on YouTube.The series takes place in a timeline where a branching, fleshy organism known colloquially as the Crawl was discovered in 1931; in the following decades, the world at large seems to have adjusted to this new addition to the natural world, even incorporating much of it into their everyday lives.
Of course the Crawl isn't entirely harmless. Of course the Crawl is generating all kinds of strange "Living Meat" creatures from its branches on occasion. Of course there seems to be some other things about it that the world powers aren't sharing with the public...
A trailer for a second season was released in November 2023.
This series contains examples of:
- Alternate History: The series takes place in a world where the Crawl appeared on Earth in the early 1930s, and from what we are shown, humanity and the world in general seems to have more or less adjusted in the following 50 or so years.
- Beat: Played for Horror; in the tape discussing the biology and habits of mimics, there is a long, uncomfortable pause (in both the narration and the music) after the line explaining that the mimic's diet is comprised entirely of human flesh.
- Body Horror: The Crawl itself is Meat Moss which can spawn a variety of more complex life-forms, all of which resemble skinless creatures or some amalgamation of meat and fungus. Even mostly harmless varieties like trimmings and meat snakes have repulsive appearances, and are said to smell terrible.
- Breather Episode: "Guide to owning a pet Trimming" is mostly devoid of horror elements, as it instead provides genuine advice on caring for the defenseless trimmings, intertwined with footage of them interacting with their environment and human owners like real-life pets.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Society at large apparently accepts the Crawl and its various non-violent spawn as a part of everyday life. Some people even keep trimmings (which resemble a cross between a turtle and a skinless raccoon) as pets, and meat snakes are incorporated into the waste disposal industry as helpful tools due to their docile nature and willingness to consume any dead organic material. Mimics, while dangerous, are treated mostly like other apex predators such as bears and cougars in the tapes. Of course, then we find out that there are things even more dangerous to people than mimics, and that the government and media don't want us to know some things about them.
- Cosmic Horror Story: It becomes increasingly apparent over the "Living Meat Documentary" video that the Crawl and the things it spawns are alien life forms, and they are modifying Earth's climate and environment rather than adapting to it. Additionally, there's the monoliths and the Singularity, which are almost entirely unexplained and serve no known purpose or role in the ecosystem, unlike the rest of the creatures.
- Death of a Child: "Species Anomaly Report" all but outright states that it is a depiction of a harvester incapacitating and feeding on a young child. It is also heavily implied that it uses the child's paralyzed body to lure his mother and kill and consume her too.
- Deliberate VHS Quality: Outside of the found footage segments, most of the videos feature the typical film grain, chromatic aberration, and glitching that characterizes the analog horror genre.
- Eaten Alive: While mimics at least kill their prey before eating it, hosts prefer to Mind Control their victims, then make them kneel so it can disembowel them, consume the organs, and leave the prey to quickly bleed to death. Horrifyingly, in "Species Anomaly Report", it's revealed that harvesters eat their prey alive too. Despite the Living Meat Research Documentary stating the prey exsanguinates first then drags them into the soil to decompose, we are treated to the lovely truth of what actually happens, up-close. Twice. Revealing that the harvester does not wait for the prey to bleed out before deploying it's secondary tendrils, which seem to liquefy its prey when they latch on. While the first victim is ambiguous, if the second victim is any indication, their prey is indeed ALIVE when the liquefaction starts.
- Eldritch Abomination: Compared to the other Carnis which seems to have at least some believable role in the ecosystem the Monoliths and especially Singularities are completely inexplicable, with the former being titanic figures measuring hundreds of feet high and are unmoving unless provoked, which they are shown to be Nigh-Invulnerable. And the latter being even more mysterious being 3 meter balls of something that suspend themselves off the ground through unknown means and emit magnetic and energy signals for an unknown purpose.
- Found Footage: The mimic section of "Living Meat Documentary" and "Mimic Defense Instructional Tape" both feature segments filmed on handheld cameras of people encountering mimics. In both instances, the cameraperson is attacked and presumably killed and eaten.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Throughout most of the videos, there are instances where the sound and/or footage cuts out. During these points, it is possible to catch glimpses of news articles related to creatures spawned from the Crawl and how they are affecting the world, as well as pages from a storybook that seems to tell an allegorical version of how the alien life forms came to be on Earth.
- Government Conspiracy: "Living Meat Research Documentary" heavily implies that the Canadian government, and possibly other world governments, are suppressing information on the more mysterious entities spawned by Crawl. There is almost no public information concerning the Singularity, for example. It is seemingly confirmed in "Message" that other information is being suppressed, and that certain factions or individuals want to reveal the truth to the world.
- Grim Up North: The location of the Singularity, seemingly the source of the Carnis organisms is a fictional island in Canada's far north.
- Hell Is That Noise:
- "Guide to owning a pet Trimming" has a segment showcasing the cries of a Trimming and it sounds like some distorted screaming. Amusingly in-universe this is treated as more annoying than horrifying.
- "Species Anomaly Report" has several between the audio distortions when showing the Harvesters converging to a single location, the bloodcurdling screams of a child being attacked and devoured by a Harvester followed later by the screams of the mother finding her dead child and getting devoured herself.
- Humanoid Abomination: Mimics are spawned from the crawl like the other Carnis species and initially have a grub-like form similar to trimmings, but as they mature, they take on a distinctly humanoid shape. Adult mimics resemble elongated, skinless humans with bulging eyes and wide, toothy grins. If that weren't enough, mimics that are particularly successful hunters can apparently grow skin and learn to blend in with their prey by wearing clothes to obscure their shape. Hosts also have this to a lesser extent, with the top half of their bodies being humanoid but with longer arms and no eyes in comparison to Mimics.
- Meat Moss: The Crawl resembles thick, veiny structures that grow like plants or fungi in almost any type of environment. It can apparently be used as a meat substitute in many diets if you choose to believe the videos.
- Mind Control: Hosts can have this effect on people by producing spores that gets carried on the winds that invade a human's brain when ingested, causing the humans to travel to the Host's location and offer themselves to it. Implied to be deliberately exploited too by the Flavour Enhancer with its cult-like commercial and how it looks suspiciously like the Host's spores.
- Sigil Spam: A red triangle is a returning visual motif through the series, namely shown as the logo for the company who created the Flavour Enhancer. It is also in Freeze-Frame Bonuses like on the uniform of a man during the "Meat Snake Specimen" video and also during the story book segments that is associated with the visitors in the story. Might be tied to the Monoliths too as their heads are flat surfaces in the shape of an upside-down triangle.
- Slain in Their Sleep: The Mimic's preferred method of killing their victims is devouring them while they're asleep.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Thankfully averted with the Meat Snakes, serpentine masses of flesh that, despite their horrifying appearance, are passive and harmless corpse eaters that keep the environment clean and stop plagues from spreading. They only lash out if you provoke them while they're eating, but otherwise they mind their own business.
- Speculative Biology: Played for Horror. The main threat of the story are 8 species of meat-based creatures known collectively as Vita Carnis and the more dangerous predators of the genus will often target humans.
- Too Dumb to Live: The victim in the Mimic episode keeps a flashlight on while hiding in a closet. It's really no wonder the Mimic knew where to look.
- Unreliable Narrator: National Living Meat Research is not an official organisation and they simply got leaked classified information they didn't fully understand. Most of the other footage is created by a cult trying to push a narrative. Several of their materials contradict each other and it's not entirely clear which is correct, in particular in the case of how to fight Mimics.
