Even with the biggest budgets and the bestspecial effects, it can be hard for ahorrormovie to make a ridiculous concept scary. Whether it be a failure to adapt the source material or a film not understanding its own premise, countless scary movies can’t make the odd terrifying. Most of these failures are due to a lack of commitment from the project’s creators;something that, luckily, the team behindFrogmanhad in spades. Directed byAnthony Cousins, this foundfootage horrorsees a trio trying to track down a wild cryptid that one of them swears he saw years before. Their journey takes them down an insidious path filled withmaniacal cults, strange magic, and of course, a huge frog.
All of these aspects may appear more laughable than scary at first,but it’s the film’s willingness to envision what these would actually look like that makes it so unsettling. It lures viewers in with its wildness, making them laugh in disbelief like so many of its characters before confronting them withthe terrifying truth our cast must suffer through: this is all real. By showing how the strangest ideas would be utterly petrifying in reality, it manages to elevate what could have been ridiculous into something nobody would ever want to face.
‘Frogman’ Turns an Absurd Legend Into a Terrifying Nightmare
Frogman’sinitial plot is one that many people have seen in found footage horror movies before:a group of people with a camera who don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. It follows the listless Dallas (Nathan Tymoshuk), a wannabe videographer whose career (and in many ways, his life) was defined at the age of 12 when he captured “alleged” footage of the titular creature on a family trip. Viewers have criticized his evidence for years and, to prove his findings, he ropes in his friends Scotty (Benny Barrett) and Amy (Chelsey Grant) for a trip back to Loveland, Ohio,hoping to once again spot the creature.
The film’s first half is filled with disappointment; our characters struggle to find any real proof and, after a hilarious encounter with a man in a bad costume, begin to believe this story of a humanoid frog who can hypnotize people and uses a magic wand to cast spells is just a ploy for tourism. It’s a doubt that can easily rub off on viewers and make them suspect thatFrogmanrepresents something deeper,the creature acting as a weird receptacle for Dallas' sense of inadequacy —until it appears. And not only is everything rumored about the Frogman true,but it is so much more disturbing than anyone could have expected.
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Frogman,at its core, is a cryptid story, and it draws on a sense of local horror that has made these kinds of tales persist for generations. The Frogman of Loveland, Ohio is a real story, and while it may not feature a wand and a devoted cult, this tale drives people to visit the town in the same way the film’s main group does.
While it may be funny to laugh at the tale of Frogman like Dallas' friends did, that hilarity stops once viewers see the actual creaturecreeping along walls and turning people into disgusting masses of warts and ooze. Audiences learn of a cult that sacrifices innocent townsfolk in the hope that the frogman will spare them, a kind of human horror that recontextualizes the aspects of this myth —even the magic wand — into something truly horrific that can and will harm the characters that viewers have come to care about.Frogmanis a concept riddled with ridiculousness and hilarity (like many ofthe best folktales) but the way this plot takes every part of it seriously makes viewers understand that mythological creatureslike this may sound silly until you actually have to face one.
‘Frogman’s Ridiculous Parts Are What Make It So Scary
WhileFrogmanbecomes an unnerving rollercoaster through the film’s commitment, there are moments when even its enthusiasm can’t make up for some of the plot’s shakiness.The motives behind the cult spiral out as the film goes on,and while Frogman’s abilities are terrifying, the movie doesn’t explain how or why it terrorizes people in these mystical ways.Still, even with those flaws, the film captures the true terror of cryptids by drawing on the fear of the unknown that has made them a mainstay of most cultures. It captures the essence of these pieces of folklore through the absurdity of their concepts, drawing viewers in with the kind of creepy yet laughable story that they’ve heard in their own lives. It gets them invested by showing them a narrative they can recognize before making its most ridiculous parts viscerally real. And, by recognizing the goofiness of folklore like Frogman for the haunting warnings they are, the movie makes audiences understand that it’s easy to laugh at these stories when you hear about them — but it’s hard to survive if you ever find yourself caught by them.
