Strange Nature (2018) on Netflix
NR20181h 40mDramaHorrorMystery
Kim Sweet, a one-hit wonder, brings her son Brody to a small Minnesota town to mend ties with her father, Chuck. Deformed frogs fill the local ponds, and the mutations are spreading.
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- Netflix2.2/5
- IMDb4.4/10889 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes43%
Trailer
Plot summary
Students on a field trip near Henderson, Minnesota, found hundreds of deformed frogs in a pond in 1995, and reports of misshapen amphibians soon arrived from dozens of states. No cause was confirmed. In the same region, Kim Sweet, a former pop singer whose career rests on a single hit, arrives with her eleven-year-old son, Brody, to reconnect with Chuck, her estranged father. Wildlife around the town is already showing the same deformities, and the number of cases keeps climbing. Mayor Paulson and the other residents have no explanation for what is happening in the water, and the mutations move beyond the ponds.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Strange Nature (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Strange Nature's premise came from a real 1995 discovery: students on a field trip found hundreds of deformed frogs in a pond near Henderson, Minnesota. By 1996, mutated frogs had been reported in 35 US states and three Canadian provinces, including nearly three-quarters of Minnesota's 87 counties.
- During preproduction, writer-director Jim Ojala consulted leading ecologists on the deformed frog phenomenon, and one was so supportive that they supplied the production with actual deformed frogs, which were used in several scenes.
- Ojala pitched Strange Nature as "Erin Brockovich...with monsters" and insisted on shooting in Minnesota with local cast and crew; several interested producers preferred locations such as Louisiana or Bulgaria, and one suggested the deformities be caused by aliens.
- For Mayor Paulson, Jim Ojala extended offers to high-profile actors including Kurt Russell and John Goodman, admitting they were "people we had no business talking to". The part went to Stephen Tobolowsky, who was excited because the character was written realistically rather than as a villainous archetype.
- Principal photography ran 19 days in August 2014, mainly in Duluth and parts of rural Itasca County, Minnesota. Ojala called the schedule grueling, with no cellphone or computer communications in remote locations, and said the shoot broke "every rule in the indie film book" with tons of locations and characters, makeup and creature effects, stunts, puppets, animals, kids and even a newborn baby.
- Minnesota's governor and legislature funded a study of the frog deformities from 1998 to 2000, working with scientists from the University of Minnesota and several federal agencies. No conclusive cause was found and funding was withdrawn in July 2001.
