Frogman

 The United States is awash with cryptids: strange beasts that keep appearing in eyewitness reports, blurry photographs and the pages of Weekly World News, but have so far avoided capture or any other proper proof of their existence. You've got your superstars, of course: Sasquatch, Mothman, the Jersey Devil, the Dignified Kardashian, and the Chupacabra. But dig a little deeper, and there's a host of local celebrities, too: Skunk Ape, Ogopogo, Goatman... and the Loveland Frogman.

 I knew of all of these... except for that last one, the subject of 2023's Frogman, a very enjoyable take on that subgenre of found footage movies, the fake documentary.

 More than 20 years ago, the young Dallas Kyle, a HI8 Camcorder enthusiast, made national news  while on a family holiday when he caught footage of the Ohio-based cryptid peeking at him and his sister from the foliage

 Now a failed, middle-aged director of local obscurities who's reduced to living in his sister's guest room, Dallas (Nathan Tymoshuk) is incensed to find some youtuber dipshit has dug up his old video to mock him. Determined to prove everyone wrong, he enlists the help of his friends Scotty (Benny Barrett) and Amy (Chelsey Grant) to go to Loveland for a weekend to make a documentary about Frogman. And to give the movie a visual identity, he resolves to shoot it entirely in his ancient Sony camcorder.

 The 'crew' arrive in town, interview the locals, get up to some very tame mischief, and find clues that things might be a little weirder than they seem.

 It's enjoyable, thanks to the fun characters and a persistent sense of oddness, but a little familiar (I got some heavy Willow Creek vibes more than once). Thankfully everything leads to a very enjoyable confrontation that includes quite a bit of the titular monster - obscured by blocking, camera shake, visual artifacts and plain old darkness, mind: we're talking about an extremely low budget production here.

 As cheap as it is, the whole sequence is inventive, varied, and while knowingly, extremely ridiculous, it takes itself seriously enough to avoid losing its sense of menace. Director Anthony Cousins crams it with incident and (very lo-fi) stylistic touches, not to mention a dollop of sculpted beasties and make-up effects. It also features someone saying "pollywog" in a context that made me laugh.

 The script (by the director and John Karsko) is very likeable - all three central characters are well rounded and fun to watch -  even if one of them is a stick in the mud. I can't say I ever cared about a romantic subplot, but the rest of their antics did make me chuckle a few times. The town of Loveland itself and the lore around its mascot also provides some appealing weirdness; Did I mention the Frogman has been known to wave a wand around, like a wizard?

 If I have to be honest, now I know that the Frogman-themed shop is a real tourist trap and not a near-miraculous feat of production design, I'm a little less enthused with the movie as a whole. But the scene there is still a lot of fun, and there's a few other cute little bits of local colour, like a surprisingly swole cutout of the Frogman for people to take their pictures with.

 I don't want to oversell this movie; As charming as they manage to make the characters, there's still a some wasted time en route to the fireworks factory. It also, I'm sad to report, looks like absolute garbage - the choice of camera plus naturalistic lighting means that sometimes we can't see people's faces even in daylight shots. God knows why Dallas bothered to hire a cameraman.

 All this aside, it's a clear labour of love from a bunch of talented, enthusiastic people. FROGMAN WILL RETURN, the credits promise. I hope he does.

 

*: I am not proud of this; Running horror roleplaying games for a few decades makes you an expert in all sorts of useless knowledge.