Rated: Not Rated | Running Time: 80 Minutes
From: Rotting Press
Available on Digital Platforms: March 8, 2023
Also available on VHS
I must say that when I got the press release for “Frogman,” I wondered two things. One, is there really a city called Loveland, Ohio, and two, if so, who would set some fictitious legend about a creature in said city.
Turns out there is an actual Loveland, Ohio, and it also turns out the city has a legend about, well, you guessed it, a frogman.
Who knew?
I’m still not sure the town will like the apparent “newfound footage” of frogman, nor the direction the footage seems to take the legend, but hey, it’s about 90 minutes of taking the weirdness of a legend of a, well, frogman, to a bizarre, horror-filled level.
As the movie goes, young Dallas, at an impressionable young age of 12, captured some film footage of Frogman, a mythical creature who lived in the woods around Loveland, Ohio. This creature was about four feet tall, looked like a frog, and walked around on two legs.
No one really believed Dallas, but his entire life he has been haunted with this footage, and of his desire to find Frogman once and for all.
Fast forward 20 years and Dallas is, well, 32, his life is kind of crappy, so what to do? You grab that old video camera with a couple of friends and try to find Mr. Frogman.
And if you’re a fledgling filmmaker like Dallas, you decide to also make it into a full-blown documentary.
As you drag your videographer friend, as well as the girl you want to be your girlfriend but won’t tell her you want her to be your girlfriend, along, quickly you find that there may be more to the legend than you believe. What really tips you off? Why, when the local sheriff tells you to leave town of course.
If you’re Dallas, do you leave town? Heck no! You’ve got Frogman to find, into the woods you go to set up camp, but you and your friends are still pretty stupid because you don’t really have camping provisions nor enough cell batteries for your phones, but damn, your video camera battery seems to last forever!
Eventually you find the true story of Frogman, and it ain’t good. Yea, let’s just say that there might be little Frog-people walking around pretty soon, and you’re wrapped up in the mess.
And even with all the footage you have, no one still believes you.
Ahh, the life of trying to prove a weird legend.
The difficulty I had with Frogman was that it couldn’t seem to decide if it wanted to go for the completely absurd or the uber-suspense side of a movie. There was a Blair Witch Project feel with the entire “footage” aspect, but most of the time that footage just showed some really inept people. Frogman didn’t hit that creepy level to feel frightened, and there were too many horror movie clichés, like the “I’ll go find dry wood by myself” scene.
While the movie folks did take a crazy, actual legend and turn it even crazier, I guess I wanted a little more. I’m not sure if that more was going over-the-top, or more on the being scary, but the more never made it. For me Frogman gets 2 ½ stars out of 5. I just wanted more.
That’s it for this one! I’m Andy! L8R!!