Frogman Returns (2026)
Directed by Anthony Cousins
Screenplay by Cousins & John Karsko
Starring Alexis Allotta, Brian Villalobos, Chelsey Grant, Natalie Olivia Tran, & Nathan Tymoshuk.
★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
The first Frogman introduced us to the eponymous entity and now Frogman Returns, which just played at 2026’s edition of Toronto After Dark Film Festival, comes back to expand upon the mythology while introducing more cryptids. Dallas Kyle (Nathan Tymoshuk) is still grappling with the fame from his documentary and the horrors of actually finding Frogman. He’s now doing a show called Chasing Cryptids with Dallas Kyle. But he’s still concerned about Amy (Chelsey Grant), who blames him for everything that happened in Loveland, and he blames himself for what happened to Scotty. Dallas soon has to return to Loveland in spite of all the trauma left there waiting for him.
Frogman Returns is a fun continuation of the first film, even if it veers a bit too into science fiction for its own good by the end. The interesting addition in this second film is actually the way it explores fame and trauma via Dallas struggling with the fame his documentary brought him as he simultaneously suffers the trauma of having lost a friend in the process, something he considers his fault. Frogman Returns, despite its folk horror and sci-fi leanings, feels like it could be a story about true crime, as the difficulty Dallas has with fame and trauma echoes the terrible position in which many traumatised people find themselves when their pain is offered up for public consumption, albeit Dallas offered up his own pain, and the pain of his friends, willingly.
It’s sad to watch Dallas having the trauma he and his friends experienced while shooting Frogman exploited for ratings. We see it best and most ugly via Bridget (Alexis Alotta), a producer making Dallas’s new Chasing Cryptids show. The sad part is how little Bridget knows/cares about Dallas’s documentary and those involved in it. She forgets names and openly admits to not watching the entirety of Frogman. Yet when she gets a whiff of potentially going after Frogman again, she urges Dallas: “We have a fucking hit on our hands.” While Dallas could just not do the show, or he could’ve never have released the documentary after what happened to Scotty, he’s still treated more like an object than a person. Bridget sums it up perfectly when she tells Dallas he ought to be holding a camera because fans expect that, it’s “part of the brand.”
Despite the exploitation of Frogman and its pop culture status within the film’s fictional universe, Dallas has ultimately put himself in the position he’s in by allowing a traumatic event he and his friends experienced to be displayed to the public for his own financial and reputational gain. This is a microcosm of a larger culture today surrounding public displays of trauma via media. Yet it’s one thing to put your own trauma into media, it’s a whole other beast to put trauma involving more than just yourself into media, such as what Dallas did with Frogman. Part of Frogman Returns concerns Dallas trying to find a way to redeem himself, even if Amy explains in no uncertain terms that there’s simply no redemption to be had for him.
Even if Frogman Returns isn’t as effective as the first film, it’s fun and contains interesting world building. We get a look at other cryptids such as a Night Walker and the Squonk. We also get a cheeky Freddy Krueger homage: “Welcome to slimetime, bitch.” There’s even a reference to the V/H/S series, specifically V/H/S/94, when Dallas mockingly asks whether someone now worships Ratma rather than Frogman. While Frogman remains the strongest film of the two, Frogman Returns is a worthy sequel because it offers more substance underneath its premise by looking honestly at how fame and trauma can intertwine in the worst kind of ways as Dallas is driven to extremes in hopes he can make up for exploiting the pain of those close to him.
