‘Frogman’ Review
Stars: Nathan Tymoshuk, Benny Barrett, Ali Daniels, Chari Eckmann, Chelsey Grant, Liam Hage, Stephen Hage, Michael Paul Levin, Arden Michalec | Written by Anthony Cousins, John Karsko | Directed by Anthony Cousins
If you follow my writing in any way, you probably know that The Blair Witch Project is one of my favourite ever movies. Not just horror movies. It was the first horror movie I watched at the cinema and it was probably the first film I really got into in a big way. I bought the books, the t-shirt, read the newspaper articles and followed what I could on the website (I’m not sure I even had the internet at home at the time). So any film that is clearly influenced by the found-footage classic is going to get some love from me.
And Frogman is clearly influenced by The Blair Witch Project. There’s plenty of other stuff added but it features a group of three people going to a town with a mysterious folklore, this time a ‘frogman’, after talking to locals they eventually camp in the woods to see what they can find. In Frogman though, the lead character accidentally filmed what he believes is the frogman when he was ten years old. After still being mocked for it well into adulthood, he now wants to prove to the world (or a few trolls on the internet) that frogman is indeed real.
This does give him a reason to stick around when things go downhill and gives us a reason to why the characters keep on filming – something that haters of the genre will always complain about. And those people who hate the shaky-camera-style are not gonna like Frogman. The camera moves around a lot and quickly. The characters run around a lot and there’s times when you’ll be struggling to see what is on screen. For fans of the genre like myself, this just makes things better. It’s used to near perfection here. You’ll be desperate to see what is happening and when it does, it’s worth the wait.
Those final fifteen minutes or so go hard. With a title like Frogman, the filmmakers know they have to deliver something a bit strange, and they do that but without going too far (or maybe that’s just me because I guess a giant frog figure attacking people might seem too far for some!). So much goes on in the finale I couldn’t help but enjoy it. It is not all as subtle as something like Blair Witch, and it does well not to really go in the direction I was expecting. The slow build, when it comes to the frogman itself, works really well here and I can’t imagine many people will be disappointed with the climax and eventual sightings.
I enjoyed the three main actors. The chemistry was good and I liked the relationships the individual characters had with each other. Each one could have easily been unlikeable but you fully understand why each of them is acting like they are. The script is solid and kept at less than eighty minutes.
If you’re a fan of found footage horror, Frogman comes highly recommended. There’s so much to enjoy, it takes influence from the very best of the genre and has a few great ideas of its own. Bring on Frogman 2!
**** 4/5
Frogman is out now.
