How to Make a Monster Army
Alyssa Onofreo is not afraid to break new Internet boundaries with Crypt TV’s army of horrific creatures
Some might have you believe that good horror content is hard to find online, and as a horror fan myself, I can say that was certainly true for quite a while, especially in the short film department. But recently (and thankfully), there have been a few different sources that have popped up to help distribute weird genre film — I could list lots of them off the top of my head, but no list would be complete without one of the most influential and forward-thinking channels out there: Crypt TV.
Founded by Jack Davis and Eli Roth in 2015 to see how they could use the Internet to give people original horror content, Crypt TV has grown from a tiny distribution company for independent filmmakers into a massive brand, cranking out shorts and series of their own original monster creations like The Look-See, Mordeo, and The Birch (they’ve even managed to tie many of them together into a horror cinematic universe!), as well as distributing featured shorts from up-and-coming filmmakers. One of the people on the frontline of this brand is Alyssa Onofreo, Crypt’s social director and the force behind their recent viral expansion into TikTok, among many other efforts for the channel.
I spoke with Alyssa about her involvement with the company, which Crypt TV character she’d hate to run into, and how to make a monster into a meme.
Peter: Thanks for agreeing to chat with me, Alyssa! Could you start by telling me what your official title is, and then, what you wish your official title was?
Alyssa Onofreo: Currently the Director of Social and Audience Development at Crypt TV. If I could, I would call myself the Meme Monster — I’m always terrorizing my office with the worst and strangest things on the internet, and god forbid props are left out because I WILL play with them all day.
You’ve had such a long history working in social media for a ton of different brands, like Super Deluxe and Jash. How did you get involved with Crypt TV?
They were looking for someone who knew YouTube well (they had just launched their YouTube page after success on Facebook) and actually they hit up a friend of mine from another job first, but he thought this was a better fit for me. I’d heard of it before but hadn’t checked out too much, but once I started watching I was obsessed. Everything I saw made me really excited.
Crypt TV’s mission statement is to “create culture changing monster stories that bring the world closer together”. On a personal level, what does that mean to you?
I really think the internet is meant to bring people together and can be used for good. In a world with so many real fears and dangers, I’m glad to have a space where we can look at those and explore our feelings about them, and talk about them together by projecting them onto monster stories. It’s so much easier to have conversations about these topics when you can use characters as a metaphor for yourself, but anything that makes you feel deeply and passionately comes from you, and the media you’ve consumed has only brought that out. I think there is a tendency to want to sugar coat things or pretend bad things don’t happen or won’t happen here, or on the flipside, to live in a state of total panic, and monster stories give us the chance to look into the darkness.
I’ve loved watching the Crypt TV TikTok take off recently — what’s your thought process behind taking some of these fantastic monster designs to the world of lip-syncs and memes? Can you talk me through the creative process behind making a TikTok?
The first time I logged into TikTok I didn’t know what I was looking at. My full screen was full of a random person’s video, with music that was familiar to me but seemingly unrelated to the clip, and there were all kinds of “challenge” hashtags. I’d seen funny TikToks (and haunted, cursed, etc., etc.) posted on Twitter and Instagram but after I spent more time on the actual app scrolling through memes it started to make sense to me. TikTok is the ultimate culmination of the entire internet distilled into 15 second meme videos. So many of them rely on layers and layers of memes, irony/false irony, or just making the dumbest most absolutely pointless joke but it’s so silly you can’t not laugh. THAT is what I fucking love about the internet. The kids on there can’t possibly know what all of these songs are from, they just see other people do the meme and want to do their version of it. It’s just everyone compounding on what everyone else has done, and the algorithm shows you a pretty good assortment of stuff based on what you’ve watched so it seems like there’s a good amount of discoverability. Most of our audience has come from a combo of posting on our YouTube tab with a gif about it, and working with Johnny Berchtold who posted what has been dubbed the “gay Look-See hallway TikTok”.
My thought process is: make everything gay, make everything ridiculous. I feel like my brain has absolutely been broken by the internet and I can’t not see everything through the lens of a thousand memes. Another thing I keep saying to people is The Shape of Water won Best Picture. It’s very on the nose — people wanna fuck the monster. Carlos Maza has tweeted about it, so many people have tweeted about monsters being gay icons (The Babadook), and so much of internet culture is parsed from drag/gay culture. There’s a show by the Boulet Brothers called Dragula which is all drag queens dressed as monsters. It just seems like all of these things have crossed together at the same time and I am in a place where I’m allowed to play with them so I’m just going nuts and having fun until someone tells me to stop. I’m very lucky and I love that I get to do this.
Our fans have said in so many words through their comments and fan art that they would love this, so I’ve just taken my cues from them and doing what I would have loved to see as a kid growing up online.
How do you keep from being totally overwhelmed in your work, both in a world where social media moves so fast and at a production company that seems to come up with a new horror story every minute?
Oh, I am frequently overwhelmed, lol. But I just try to listen to my body and treat it well — I don’t push myself to stay up past when I am physically not able to, and luckily I don’t work under the kinds of deadlines that would need me to worry about that too much. I’m working pretty much all the time — I wake up and check Twitter, emails, and everything for Crypt and myself before I walk out the door in the morning. Things worked a little bit differently when I first got to Crypt and it was more like, be in at this time, and everyone was always having meetings — there were so few of us that everyone kind of had to pitch in more, but now luckily I’m able to be more focused on the specific things I’m interested in and good at and I can do things my way. So I’m usually constantly flipping through notifications, responding to comments, making new graphics in all the time I have the brain capacity for it, but when I’m tired and I can’t do anymore — I know it’s useless to push myself and that I need to rest and recharge to be able to do more. Responding to comments and our whole audience is a lot of customer service, and I love our audience so much and want to treat them right, so it’s a lot of emotional labor and managing that, so I just have to take a break when I feel the need. I’m also lucky that I can work from home when I want/need to.
As far as new monsters and stories — I love the variety that we have, and I’m so sucked into our own universe that I can’t wait for our development and production teams to release new info and I can find out what’s happening next.
Outside of Crypt TV, what do you think are the most inspiring horror and genre media releases of the last year?
Annihilation and Upgrade were my favorite movies of 2018, and Hereditary and A Quiet Place. For 2019, What We Do In the Shadows (the show) is #1. I liked Us, and I really enjoyed The Haunted of Hill House on Netflix. Also a few other mentions for a few years back: Cam (2018), Tragedy Girls (2017), The Love Witch (2016), and What We Do In The Shadows (2014, movie)
Which of the Crypt TV Universe monsters would you least want to run into?
I really don’t want to run into the Look-See. If he remembers the mistakes I’ve held onto since kindergarten as well as I do then my death certificate is already signed.
Before we wrap this up, can you talk about any upcoming projects you’re excited for?
Super excited for the upcoming TikToks and what I’ve been calling the Crypt Meme universe, lol. We’re also bringing back several favorite monsters in the next year in big ways. We just announced a Door in the Woods sequel with Kal Penn, as well as Miss Annity season 2, but I don’t think I can say much about anything else yet. Everything we’re doing now is a huge level up, though, so I’m really excited to see where this path leads!
Alyssa Onofreo is the Director of Social and Audience Development for Crypt TV. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok as @omgchomp, and check out Crypt TV at @crypttv on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Alyssa’s AMAZING TikTok work for Crypt can be found at @CryptMonsters.
