Frogman

BigFoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, Nessie, Crater Lake Monster, and many others lurk in the great outdoors to scare, terrorize, and sell tourist kitsch.   The perfect vehicle for getting the story out is the ‘Found Footage’ genre, with startling immediate pictures, locations, and real, local people, in some cases, making their case.   Frogman takes those into account and gives us the Human side of obsession, lost love, friendship, and, yes, some bloody good scares.

The picture opens in the summer of 1999; a 12-year-old named Dallas Kyle is on a family outing in Loveland, Ohio, with parents who don’t get along.  While driving after a rather realistic argument, he captures footage of the Frogman. Much like those reported encounters with various creatures no one believes it was real. Twenty years later, Dallas (Nathan Tymoshuk) is now an amateur, non-working filmmaker who doesn’t have an outside job and is struggling.  Dallas has lived ‘Temporarily’ for two years in the guest room of an obliging friend who tells him he must move out. The determined Dallas figures it time to return to Loveland with friends Amy (Chelsey Grant) and cameraman Scotty (Benny Barrett) determined to obtain proof that the Frogman exists. For the trio of friends, this is one final experience before life takes them in separate directions.

“…determined to obtain proof that the Frogman exists…one final experience before life takes them in separate directions.”

Drawing heavily from the original The Blair Witch Project, Willow Creek, and the early V.H.S.  series, you get interviews with the Loveland, Ohio, locals, all looking somewhat odd.  What sets Frogman apart from other films of this nature is the plausible character development as unrequited relationship troubles surface concerning one lustful night between Dallas and Amy.  The beginning of the picture is punctuated by good-natured, beer-swilling, millennial humor.  The accents well with the latter obsession in Dallas as it becomes stronger when he cold-heartedly leads his friends on an effective nocturnal river search. This is not the happy-go-lucky, slightly shy Dallas and his drunk friends at a previously seen send-off party for Amy.   Nathan Tymoshuk always gives Dallas a look and lien delivery that something is behind his lackadaisical nature that almost explodes in the river search.

Director Anthony Cousins, with a story that is based on fact and co-written with John Karsko, makes some interesting choices for the camera. The usual running footage, the poor video resolution, and glitches in the tape at the beginning of the film show it is 20 years old, and very effective night footage adds to the atmosphere.  What lifts Frogman above is not the special effects but how these actors sell what is happening to them on screen. Chelsey Grant is especially effective in a nocturnal on-camera meltdown. The blood, the scars, and the mysterious encounters are all shown with enough of the actors involved in the work, no matter how ludicrous it may seem, which makes for effective drama.  What starts as a documentary to prove a point soon turns into a Lovecraftian nightmare as the horrific secrets hidden beneath Loveland’s Ohio’s idyllic surface bubble forth like bile.

Frogman works on the level of character development that tends to make the obvious budget considerations seem not to noticeably take away from the experience.  This work looks at the effect of fear, obsession, death, and a horrific realization regarding a community very close to the level of Producer Val Lewton in his series of low-budget, effective films for RKO Studios in the forties.  The subtle expressions of the actors and the playing of silence, which is often underrated, explore what Lewton called ‘The quality of fear.’ The work doesn’t offer any narrative surprises, but it makes up for it with creature effects. The more the humans invade the Frogman’s turf, the more delightfully weird the people bend.