Frogman



While traveling with his family through Loveland, Ohio in 1999, a 10-year-old Dallas Kyle and his sister Lizzie get a glimpse of the most well known local legend of the area, the Frogman. Not only that, but Dallas also manages to inadvertently capture footage of the elusive creature on film. The only problem is, after over 20 years nobody believes him, and people on the internet keep calling him a liar and a hoax. Finally sick of listening to all the online trolls, Dallas decides to head back to Loveland to capture new footage of the mysterious creature, and enlist his friends Amy and Scotty to help him out. But what starts off as a rather innocent documentary project quickly takes a turn when they start to discover Loveland’s deep, dark secrets.



Frogman is a low-budget, American made horror movie from 2023. I also realized about 3 seconds in that the movie was, to my horror, also a found-footage film, which I was not expecting. Again, I should really start to look some of these unknown films up before I watch them. But I didn’t, so here is a quick visual representation of the face I made upon realizing that the frog movie I was watching, the one with the surprisingly clever poster design that I actually really like, was going to make me watch a bunch of shaky-cam footage:


Son of a Bibbit

Anyway, as this is a (supposed) cryptid film, that means that it is now lore dump time!

Ahem… Initially upon starting this movie I thought the filmmakers were pulling my leg, since I’ve never once heard of any cryptid called the ‘Frogman’ or any variation thereof. But as it turns out there is an actual basis to this film. It’s just that it happens to be a very small and rather unknown one, unless I suspect you happen to live, like, right there.

The first sighting of the fabled Frogman of Loveland happened in 1955, when a business man was driving through the area one night and happened upon three figures on the side of the road that were around 3-4ft tall with leathery skin and ‘frog faces’. In some versions of this tale they were also near a bridge and at least one of them had something in its hand resembling a ‘wand’, complete with sparks flying out the end of it. Which to me just sounds like a very drunk business man having some sort of very bad trip at 3 am, but what do I know.


Or possibly the beginnings of some sort of Dungeon and Dragons campaign.

But wait, there’s more! In 1972 a Loveland police officer reported one night that ‘something’, approximately 3-4 ft long with leathery skin, had been crouched near the road had run out in front of his patrol car, stood up, and then climbed over a guardrail before going down a slope. Two weeks later, another officer described a similar creature, except he managed to get out and shoot at the thing and get a better look at it. And as it turns out it was just a tail-less iguana that had either escaped or someone had let loose. But iguanas don’t make for fun cryptid stories, so the second officer’s part of the story kinda got conveniently omitted from all the urban legends books. Oh! And there reportedly another sighting in 2016 from some dude wandering around playing Pokemon Go (lovely). So in 70 years this thing has had a whopping four reported sightings (FOUR), yet from that has still managed to inspire a slew of kitschy merchandise and has also become Loveland’s official city mascot. Ya gotta love it.


The inclusion of the ridiculous Frog Flute is how you know it’s real.

Anyway, on to the movie. It’s…. Just okay. I mean, it’s your typical found footage film. People go to investigate something in a rural setting, they miraculously find what they’re looking for, things go horribly wrong, and then there’s a lot of running and screaming and jittery camera footage involved. Ya know, pretty standard stuff.


Ugh!

To the film’s credit though, there are a few things in its favor. The acting for instance, at least in regard to the main characters, is actually pretty good. Much better than seems to be standard for similar films, at any rate. Now, some of the random side characters they occasionally interact with? They can be a little more sketchy. But the main three you spend the most time with are solid. Cheesy sometimes, but solid.



Another plus? You actually get to see the monsters in this movie! And they’re not CGI! They used actual effects. Meaning, unlike Croaked, you actually get to see little frog people running around. And they look like frogs! It’s not just some guy lumbering around in a painted scuba suit. They’re actual people in little frog suits running around and doing things. The downside of course is that this is a low-budget film and you can tell that these are people walking around in often very fake looking frog outfits. But at one point they used a frog’s tongue to wrap somebody up and try to drag them away with it, which is all I really ask for in my frog-related monster movies. So even though the frogs look kinda fake-y most of the time, I’m still giving them the point for this one! Because, damn it, they tried, and I appreciate it.


They did the thing! That’s all I wanted. Good job!

Now, the drawback is…good gracious is the pacing for this thing horrible. It takes the movie a good 20 minutes of long, drawn-out setup to get the three of them to Loveland. Then it takes them another 16 to FINALLY go looking for the Frogmen. Meaning we’re almost 40 minutes into the film before things start to actually get moving properly, and the movie is only 80 minutes long. That’s half the movie. HALF! What’s so important in that first half that took up so much time? Uh, you get to see some awkward character interaction because Dallas clearly has a thing for Amy and she doesn’t seem to reciprocate. Then there’s some road-trip antics and a little more relationship nonsense, followed by them doing cheesy touristy stuff, shopping for Frogman merch at the local gift shop (fake Frogman poop, anyone?), and then they finally do some interviews with the locals, which is the only relevant thing we’ve seen for their documentary so far. But all of that other stuff could have been cut out significantly, and you would have still ended up with the same film. Better yet, you could have cut out the relationship stuff entirely, because at no point did it have any bearing on the second part of the film.



Now, thankfully the second part of the film moves much more briskly. But it also has a couple dings against it, like some very predictable jump scares and their penchant for really overusing the ‘corrupted film’ effect to the point where it started to get annoying. But for the most part the second part of Frogman is much better than the first half. Making the movie an entertaining, but still very average found footage film. Meaning overall I liked the movie for what it was, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you were already interested in kinda off-beat found-footage films. So if that’s your jam, then you’ll probably be amused by a couple of things here. But while occasionally enjoyable, this ain’t the cream of the crop.

Frogman is available on a variety of streaming services.

Frogman is also available on Bluray from TerrorVision.

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