THE DEVIL'S MOUTH Review

Shark movies!

I want to make this abundantly clear: I'm not a shark movie guy. I mean, I like Jaws as much as the next person, but I don't understand the cinematic world's fascination with these beasts of the sea. I don't get why "Shark Week" is a thing that people celebrate and program TV watching around. I just... it's all beyond me. There are so many lethal animals on there planet, and I am not sure why we as a society have latched onto sharks and decided they should be the antagonists of approximately five percent of all movies ever made. Other than that, yeah, I mean... Jaws was really good.

But there are SO MANY really good movies. Jurassic Park is phenomenal, but we don't have, like, a million dinosaur movies flooding the market.

Regardless, I'm just not a shark movie aficionado. I have never seen a Sharknado, for instance. And all of those C-tier shark horror properties... Sharkula, Sharks of the Corn, Sharktopus. None of these have any appeal to me. I have occasionally watched things like Open Water and 47 Meters Down and Thrash, but that's mostly because I'll watch anything new and reputable on a streaming service I am already paying for. To be fair, I actually quite liked 47 Meters Down, now that I think of it.

I suffered for this very recently when I watched Chum on AMC Plus. Chum is... not a good movie. I have seen 79 movies released in 2026 as of this writing, and Chum is ranked... number 79th. The acting and the technical merits of the flick were downright atrocious, and the best thing I could find to say about it was that it has a slight "so bad, it is good" quality if that is what you are looking for in your film choices. But as a straight ahead watch? Whoof. Very bad.

And so, I went into Amazon Prime's newest offering, The Devil's Mouth, quite tepidly. Honestly, I would not have watched it at all, but I follow two of its stars, Lana Condor (our once upon a time live action Jubilee!) and Kathryn Newton (awesome in everything in which she is cast), on Instagram, and they kept promoting it. I figured that as a fan of their talents, I owed the flick a watch.

The Devil's Mouth is the story of a group of college-aged friends visiting Thailand and having a celebratory time while there. We learn that Sara's (Newton) father died while she was in college, and he loved Thailand, so she is visiting with her friends to honor his memory. Her best friend, Kate (Condor) is the one Sara thanks for keeping her sane and distracted after Sara's dad died. Kate has a deceased parent, too, and the pair have bonded over that. Despite all of this, Kate is somewhat commandeering and thoughtless, and their relationship is starting to strain under the weight of potentially going to opposite ends of the country after graduating.

The quintet of friends decide to dive in a series of caves--the titular Devil's Mouth--because Sara's most recalled memory of her dad's time in Thailand was his fondness for them. What starts off as a blast soon turns into a nightmare when they encounter a ferocious bull shark in the freshwater caves.

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor are a good pairing, and they have strong chemistry as a pair of friends in a somewhat toxic relationship. Condor has played the bitchy good girl before (Pretty Lethal) and is decent at it. Newton has excelled at pretty much everything she's ever been given. They are a strong duo on which to pin your film, and I bought all of their emotional beats together. 

+ The Devil's Mouth takes about 40 minutes to show a shark or hint at an attack for the first time. You would think that would be a problem, but it uses those first 40 minutes fairly wisely, to show characterization and get us involved in the protagonists who may or may not eventually become shark food. I appreciated the slow pace and establishment of our heroes early on, and there are even a few moments of terror to keep you satiated until we get to the main course. 

- The effects aren't that great when The Devil's Mouth starts relying on underwater shots of the shark attacking or ramming things or swimming or doing anything, really. For the budget of an Amazon Prime original, it's probably fine, but considering those moments really took me out of the movie, it might have been better to just exclude them. The lesson a lot of shark movies didn't seem to learn from Jaws is you can do just fine NOT showing the shark that much. 

- The Devil's Mouth was a little overlong and might have had too many characters. You could probably have combined Greg and Adrienne into one character and cut down on the runtime a bit. I'm not sure I needed both of them and their individual shticks. And at 104 minutes, this could have shaved ten and been just fine. 

OVERALL

The Devil's Mouth is perfectly okay as far as shark movies go, though it is absolutely buoyed by its two biggest stars doing all of the heavy lifting. Aside from their doing tremendous work, there's nothing you haven't seen before here. Spotty shark effects, some neat deaths, and a generic story.

🍿 SCORE = 51 / 100