The Devil’s Mouth (2026)
Directed by: Jeff Wadlow
Premise: American tourists visit a partially flooded cave system in Thailand. Deep into the cave, they are attacked by a bull shark.
What Works: The Devil’s Mouth is a shark movie but at its core this is really a slasher film. A group of young people go somewhere they should not and get picked off one at a time. A lot of better slasher films create an interesting friend group and explore how they react in a crisis. The core cast is a group of five American college students. Although they are not unique characters, they do feel real. Some of their credibility is in their naïveté and stupidity but within the framework of the premise, the filmmakers manage to distinguish everyone and give their relationships some complexity. The core relationship is between a soft spoken but smart final-girl-type played by Kathryn Newton and her assertive and impulsive childhood friend played by Lana Chandor. They are bad friends. Condor’s character cajoles and bullies her way into getting what she wants, often at the expense of Newton’s character. The group becomes stranded deep into a cave system andThe Devil’s Mouth is not only a shark movie and a slasher film but also claustrophobia horror. The film has some intense scenes and a sense of dread and doom.
What Doesn’t: The Devil’s Mouth often feels familiar. There are a lot of movies about people trapped underwater with a shark and The Devil’s Mouth echoes 47 Meters Down: Uncaged,The Last Breath, and Something in the Water. As vacation horror, The Devil’s Mouth owes a lot to The Descent. Most of The Devil’s Mouth is set inside a cave and the quality of the imagery is inconsistent. There are a few mood-setting high contrast shots but quite often the imagery is too dark. It is difficult to make out the detail or follow the action. The special effects of the shark also vary. Some images look great, especially surface shots of the shark’s dorsal fin cutting through the water, but the underwater shots are inconsistent. The size of the shark varies noticeably from scene to scene and there are some ridiculous looking shots of the shark leaping out of the water like a dolphin. A lot of storytelling details don’t make sense or are simply dumb. Like a lot of slasher films, The Devil’s Mouth has plenty of moments in which the young characters make idiotic decisions that lead to their demise.
Disc extras: Available on Amazon Prime Video.
Bottom Line: Killer shark movies are notoriously bad so calling The Devil’s Mouth above average is damning with faint praise. There is impressive stuff in it but just as much that is sloppy. The murky imagery makes the movie too hard to watch.
Episode: #1110 (August 2, 2026)