FROGMAN -- Predictable Found Footage Horror Wastes Potential

Review by Daniel Lima

It's hard not to have a love/hate relationship with found footage horror. On the one hand, it's a genre that is incredibly accommodating to burgeoning filmmakers, turning a lack of resources from a bane to a boon and forcing them to think outside the box in evoking a particular mood and feel. However, it is far too easy for burgeoning artists to rely on well-worn tropes and conventions, boring the audience and leaving the potential of their works unrealized. Sadly, such is the case for Frogman, which shortchanges its most ingenious elements by adhering to a stale and predictable formula.

The film follows a trio of friends as they visit the small town of Loveland in search of a legendary cryptid that one of them caught on video as a child. Along the way, simmering tensions between them mount, and as they dig deeper into the mystery, they find that there might be more to the legend than they could have ever conceived. The audience, however, will be bored out of their minds. ​

Anyone who has seen any found footage horror film in the past three decades knows all the typical story beats: set up the dynamics between your leads, let them aimlessly converse and bounce off one another for an hour, hint at something strange and dangerous in the meantime, end with twenty or thirty minutes of people running and screaming through the woods. Basically, back end all the horror and fill the rest with a mumblecore drama of variable quality. Suddenly, a decent short film becomes a marketable feature. ​

Frogman conforms to this exactly, making that first hour an aggravating challenge to sit through. It becomes clear that all the meaty bits will be saved for the climax, so for an hour, the film is just a drama starring horribly unlikable characters that are impossible to care about. The actors are all serviceable, but the found footage subgenre necessitates a certain raw naturalism that their calculated performances do not allow. Everything they say and do feels artificial, merely a holding pattern until the film gets let off the leash. By the time it does so, it's too late.​

That's a shame because the finale does show promise. The titular creature is a great-looking practical monster, and there are moments of body horror and inspired editing choices that give the impression that the characters have wandered into a situation they cannot handle. It should also be noted that the film is largely shot on a HI-8 camcorder rather than tinkering with footage from modern equipment in post. Touches like that are why I will always have a fondness for this subgenre, even if the films tend to blend into one another. Unfortunately, Frogman doesn't have enough juice to make the wait for the good stuff worth it.

Frogman is available on VOD and digital March 8.

Rating: 2.5/5