The Frog Review - A K-Drama Thriller!

"The Frog" is a suspense/thriller K-Drama series released in 2024, written by Son Ho-young, directed my Mo Wan-il, and starred by Kim Yoon-seok, Yoon Kye-sang, Go Min-si, and Lee Jung-eun.

The main story is set in two different timelines: one in the late 90s, and one in the present day.

In the 90s timeline, we see Koo Sang-Jun, who manages a hotel with his wife. One day, on a rainy afternoon, he makes a terrible mistake - he welcomes a serial killer into his hotel. The killer then uses one of the rooms in the hotel to commit one of his terrible crimes.

On the other timeline, in the present day, we follow Jeon Yeong-Ha, who escaped the stress of the big city and decided to build a beautiful, picturesque home in the countryside for his sick wife. Unfortunately, she then dies just a bit later. After his wife dies, Jeon decides to rent their home for the season to take advantage of its isolated location at the end of a road, right next to a forest.

His problems start when he decides to host a mysterious single mom, Go Min-Si, and her young son. On the next day, Go Min-Si leaves, and Jeon Yeong-Ha weirdly notices the little boy wasn't with her. Then, as he checks the security cameras, he has a terrible feeling he knows what the kid's fate was - and which role Go Min-Si played in it.

In the 90s timeline, the series explores how a family can change after a murder, even if none of them were directly related to the victim. It depicts, in a very raw way, how the media and society take apart drastic events, and often give visibility and even fame to the murderer instead of supporting the victims. Koo Sang-Jun's hotel is marked by the horrors that took place there, even though no one apart from the murderer has any fault in it. The owners are forced to take an unfair amount of responsibility for a crime they didn't commit - just had the bad luck of hosting.

After the hotel starts struggling financially, then comes the family problems, and Koo Sang-Jun's relationship with his wife also deteriorates. This, in turn, affects their son, as he starts being bullied at school. Financial and social burdens bear down on them, and Koo Sang-Jun's wife, unable to deal with so many issues, becomes another victim in this story. The family, the owners of the hotel, are forgotten, while the murderer gets a biography. This is a great representation of how reality, the media, and even us as a society, often can't remember the names of the victims, but we know everything about who murdered them, including their names and backgrounds.

As a result, we can't really condemn Jeon Yeong-Ha's decision to keep his suspicions about what took place at his holiday home to himself. If a murder really happened there, that place would be forever marked as "the crime scene", that is, the house where a murder took place.

However, hiding his suspicions, erasing clues, and pretending that nothing happened takes a toll on Jeon Yeong-Ha, and becomes a giant sacrifice for him. Slowly, he becomes another victim of the unstable and, at times, crazy Go Min-Si. Now that she knows he chose to ignore his suspicions and hasn't reported her to the police, she sees him as an accomplice, and forces him to do whatever she wants. At one point, she orders him to sell his precious home, and threatens his family.

This shows that, regardless of what Jeon Yeong-Ha believes initially, he'll only go so far to protect his most precious asset. He did nothing to prevent the dire fate of a child to protect his home, but how much more he'll have to endure to keep the secret he shares with Go Min-Si? When the tree fell in the forest - that is, when the little kid went missing - it made a noise, and Jeon Yeong-Ha knew of it/or heard it. He just didn't do anything about it, and that cost him a lot more than he bargained for.

The first timeline featured in the TV show is more concise and explores how dramatically the family was affected. They couldn't do anything, and had to suffer the consequences of hosting a guess without imagining they would be a killer. We can easily feel empathy for Koo Sang-Jun and understand his side, as well as his son's wish for revenge years later.

The writers could have given this timeline a bit more screen time to develop Koo Sang-Jun's fate a bit more. They could have shown how his son grew up after everything they went through.

On the other side, the second timeline seems a bit dragged out, and, at times, Jeon Yeong-Ha makes wrong and even absurd decisions. For instance, he leaves the recorder box visible, all ready to be found by Go Min-Si, and eats her tomato sauce, even though he knows she is a killer.

Lee Jung-Eun's plot as a police officer, which is what connects both timelines, doesn't seem to add much to the story. If it was another detective, one that didn't do so much in the story, it wouldn't make too much of a difference. Even though the writers tried to expand her character with the "Hunter" plot and her talent to find criminals, this never shows up again, not even in cases she solved all by herself. Her performance doesn't make sense with this moniker, even more considering her last clumsy attempt to arrest Go Min-Si.

There's another plot hole when Jeon Yeong-Ha takes Go Min-Si's notebook and tries to hack into it. The tech says that, to do that, he'd have to wipe it out, and erase all the data. However, nearly at the end of the TV show, Go Min-Si's father shows up with the notebook, now unlocked, so they have access to all the pictures that incriminate her. How did he manage to get all the data without wiping the notebook? And how did her father manage to get his hands on it, considering Go Min-Si always had it with her?

These details can be quite annoying to observant viewers.

The second timeline stretches out a bit too much, and we go back and forth a lot more on it. Sometimes, it feels like going in circles. Maybe, if it had half as many chapters, the story would be more concise and less contradictory. Overall, the show doesn't lean too hard on the element of surprise. For instance, we already know Go Min-Si will be up to no good in her scenes, so we are not really surprised when she does something terrible.

Considering all of this, I give this TV show a 3,5 out of 5. It is fun, but it could be a lot better. Maybe it should have focused more on the hotel timeline and explored it a bit more - the story could have been better then. If you're looking for a TV show to watch with no expectations, then go ahead. However, if you're looking for something more exciting and thrilling, this series could disappoint you.

What about you? Do you enjoy thrillers with popcorn and friends, or brain-tickling mysteries? Tell us all about it in our comment section.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!