Go Min-si in Netflix’s thriller K-drama “The Frog”
“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”
That’s the classic question that keeps coming up in Netflix’s latest thriller K-drama The FrogAt first glance, the show’s Korean title – which means “In the Forest Where There Is No One” – seems more apt than its odd English-language counterpart.
But there is a Korean proverb that says, “A frog will be hit and killed by a carelessly thrown stone.” That is, a careless word or action can cause great harm to others. And in that sense, perhaps no other title is more fitting for a series that further expands on this idea to show how the actions of one person can have unforeseen consequences for countless innocent bystanders who unwittingly become victims themselves (“frogs”).
Director: Mo Wan-il (The world of the married, Misty) and written by young TV writer Son Ho-young, The Frog with Kim Yoon-seok (Escape from Mogadishu), Yoon Kye-sang (Kiss Sixth Sense), Go Min-si (Sweet home) and Lee Jung-eun (parasite) and has an equally impressive supporting cast, including Kim Sung-ryung (The call), Roh Yoon-seo (Our Blues), EXO member Chanyeol (Memories of the Alhambra) and other familiar names. (Fun fact: Yoon Kye-sang is also a member of the legendary first-generation K-pop group God, and the show’s writer, Son Ho-young, happens to have the same full name as one of Yoon’s bandmates, which initially caused confusion and laughter among Korean audiences.)
In this stylish eight-episode miniseries, Kim Yoon-seok plays Young-ha, the owner of a vacation home hidden in the woods. His quiet life is abruptly turned upside down when a mysterious woman named Seong-a (Go Min-si) shows up on his property. Sang-jun (Yoon Kye-sang) ran a motel in the same area 20 years ago. Like Young-ha, he and his family’s lives change forever when he decides to rent one of his rooms to a sinister-looking guest.
Yoon Kye-sang as Sang-jun in Netflix’s The Frog
For fans of Korean crime novels: The Frog may remind you a little of the successful K-Drama from TVING A damn happy day (available worldwide on Paramount+), at least on the surface. Both series start (mostly) optimistically, until about three-quarters of the way through the first episode, when things suddenly take a scary turn. Like her role in A damn happy dayLee Jung-eun once again plays someone who is determined to catch the perpetrator in The Frog. Then there are the creepy eyes in the title cards of each show. Also, some of the themes, characters, and character arcs presented in both thrillers seem similar.
But apart from such superficial similarities, The Frog spins its own intricate web of interconnected narratives, relying on unique plot elements and masterful use of lighting, color, and music to set the mood for each scene. However, the series struggles with uneven pacing. It tries a little too hard to be clever and disturbing in the beginning, resulting in a painfully slow build that drags the plot out. Viewers might be tempted to skip the series after the first few episodes, but that would be a huge mistake, as the pace picks up in episode 4 and things start to get a little more intense. very interesting in episode 5. Episodes 6 – 8 more than make up for the slow pace of the first half. Still, the whole series probably would have worked better if it had been compressed into four or five episodes instead of eight.
Kim Yoon-seok and Lee Jung-eun in Netflix’s “The Frog”
The story is told non-linearly, constantly switching between the early 2000s (represented by the events surrounding Sang-jun and his family at the Lake View Motel) and the early 2020s (connected to Young-ha and Seong-a). This may seem confusing at first, but the series somehow manages to help viewers quickly distinguish between past and present without explicitly stating the time period in which a particular scene takes place. And although it’s unclear at the beginning how the storylines surrounding Sang-jun and Young-ha are connected, everything starts to fall into place in the second half of the series.
Like many other Korean thrillers, The Frog addresses issues that play a central role in South Korean society, such as the deficiencies of the criminal justice system, bullying in schools and the abuse of power by the wealthy elite. And while The Frog contains some plot holes and the characters sometimes do things that don’t make sense, which could probably be said about almost any thriller/horror film. The brilliant acting alone – especially in the second half – makes this series worth watching.
K-pop idol and actor Chanyeol in “The Frog”
Various characters in the show use the analogy of the unfortunate frog to point out that people who are involved in a terrible incident often wonder why it happened to them. Why did She Does it have to be the frog that gets hit by a stone? But every single one of us has probably had the experience of being a “frog” at some point in our lives. Bad things have happened to us for reasons beyond our control. But ultimately, the way we deal with the misfortune in our lives determines our fate. And this – as we see in A damn happy day– is perhaps The FrogThe core message.
The Frog is now streaming on Netflix.
