Panic Fest: Frogman Returns improves on the original by leaps and bounds

Frogman Returns. // Courtesy Panic Fest

Panic Fest 2026 just wrapped up at Screenland Armour in KC. The yearly homegrown genre film festival is a delightful cavalcade of feature films hitting theaters soon, and some with releases further down the road. Read all of our coverage of these debuts.

There’s just something special about a good found-footage movie. That was the case with writer-director Anthony Cousins’ 2023 cult hit Frogman. Three years later, he’s hoping that lightning strikes the same amphibian twice, with his new film, Frogman Returns.

It’s better than the original and then some.

Picking up a few years after Frogman, Dallas Kyle (Nathan Tymoshuk) is in a different place entirely. After the release of his documentary, it not only proved that Frogman was real, but it also exponentially increased people’s interest in Cryptids in general. He’s been able to parlay that into a reality TV series, Chasing Cryptids, overseen by the tyrannical producer, who hasn’t seen his film, Bridget (Alexis Allotta). After a shoot goes better than expected, Dallas gets a call that shakes him. His former friend and cohort Amy (Chelsey Grant) is back in Loveland, Ohio. Worried that she could be in trouble, he takes off, with Bridget and intrepid camera operator Lucy (Natalie Tran), in tow.

That’s when things get weird. Really, really, really weird.

At the same time, one of the best elements about Frogman Returns is that it isn’t necessary to see the original. Frogman Returns, in some ways, mirrors Evil Dead 2. It follows the footprints laid by the first movie before taking its own path. Things “look” better with upgraded camera equipment than with the handheld quality of the original. The effects are bigger, the gore is more plentiful, and the universe opens up in ways you wouldn’t expect. Not to mention, Dallas even gets his own Ash transformation that has to be seen to be believed. All of it is tightly packed into 72 minutes.

Cousins and his team are doing great work, even on a micro level. Dallas’ morose “I need to prove people wrong” attitude has shifted with success. Instead of wanting to “expose” cryptids, he’s now found an affinity and protective view of them. The opening sequence with a Fresno Nightcrawler exemplifies this. He’s also wracked with guilt over what happened to Amy initially in Loveland. He hasn’t totally changed—managing to get his foot in his mouth more than he should—but it’s an interesting wrinkle nonetheless.

Cousins has something special on his hands here. There wasn’t really much like Frogman when it first leaped onto the screen a few years ago, and the same goes for Frogman Returns.