July marks the beginning of the second half of 2026, and Killer Shark Movies have been seemingly omnipresent all year, arriving in cinemas and on streaming services in full force like predators encircling unsuspecting prey. There have been sharks on a plane (Deep Water), sharks in a hurricane (Thrash), sharks in a bay (The Bay), and the nightmare of AI sharks (Chum). And now there is The Devil’s Mouth, which transports the selachian horror to a network of caves in Southeast Asia, pitting a group of college friends against a deadly Bull Shark in cramped quarters. Coming from director Jeff Wadlow, a helmer of spectacular schlock like Truth or Dare and Fantasy Island, and whose most recent film, 2024’s Imaginary, was not up to his previously enjoyable standards, The Devil’s Mouth is a firm return to form for Wadlow, making a meal out of a premise concocted by screenwriters Aja Gabel and Myung Joh Wesner. As far as streaming service horror goes, this is the platonic ideal of what the medium has to offer.
It’s vacation time in Thailand, with five college friends — Sara (Kathryn Newton), Max (Lana Condor), Max’s boyfriend James (Nico Hiraga), Adrienne (Tommi Rose), and Greg (Gavin Casalegno) — enjoying a holiday of sun, swim, and partying before they must go their separate ways into adulthood. Sara and Max are best friends, but this vacation is doubling as a farewell party of sorts, as they will be making their separate respective moves to Los Angeles and New York once they return stateside. Hoping to stave off their impending separation, the group enjoys an itinerary of planned events, but disaster strikes almost immediately when Sara is left behind by a boat tour and finds herself in a swarm of stinging jellyfish. Wounded but undeterred, the gang press forward with their main event, a cave diving excursion through The Devil’s Mouth, a secluded cavern characterized by a series of protruding stalactites and stalagmites that form a jagged, gaping maw as its entrance. Accompanied by guide Wat (Tayme Thapthimthong) and hunky safety diver Ryan (Harrison Luna), the group traverses the cave’s many checkpoints, including a pool with phosphorescent water. However, things take a turn for the worse when storm damage forces them into a less-traveled path, unwittingly placing them in the vicinity of a Bull Shark, forcing the friends to make a hasty getaway as feeding time begins.
Melding two fears, The Devil’s Mouth aims to combine the dangers of a shark attack with the claustrophobia of cave diving. It would not be a stretch of the imagination to say the film is a cross between The Shallows and The Descent, even if it’s nowhere near the artistic triumph of either of those two films. But The Devil’s Mouth is still plenty enjoyable in its own right, with Wadlow serving up a jellyfish attack right out the gate, wounding Sara and putting a damper on their trip. Meanwhile, things are already tenuous between Sara and Max heading into the excursion, with the former bankrolling the group’s vacation while the latter tends to dominate the conversation. It’s a friendship that’s turning fraught, with dissolution on the horizon once they get back home — if they can make it out of The Devil’s Mouth alive, that is.
Wadlow takes his time setting up names and personalities in act one, demonstrating no real urgency to get the five friends into the central maritime nightmare. There’s business with the jellyfish, and the ominous discovery of a dead sea turtle with a sizable bite taken out of it act as harbingers for worst things to come, yet the gang presses on, keeping their appointment with Wat in the caves. Once the hungry Bull Shark is at last unleashed, Wadlow comes alive, staging close encounters with the apex predator as characters are picked off in rapid succession. Cinematography is slightly murky in the caves, but Wadlow keeps the action cogent, where the nightmare of being taken in the jaws of a shark is further compounded by being thrashed around in the cave’s structural system; if the teeth don’t kill you, the crushing of your body against natural rock faces will. Wadlow also chart’s the group progression with an onscreen map that’s akin to Raiders of the Lost Ark’s famous red line travel sequences, emphasizing the crew’s whereabouts and increasingly desperate situation as things gradually turns more hopeless. The Devil’s Mouth is not high art, but like so many other sharks flicks this year, it never purports to be. Instead, it check all the requisite boxes for apex predator entertainment, and does so without sacrificing momentum or mayhem. For a day of beat-the-heat indoor streaming this summer, one could do a whole lot worse.
DIRECTOR: Jeff Wadlow; CAST: Kathryn Newton, Lana Condor, Nico Hiraga, Tommi Rose, Gavin Casalegno; DISTRIBUTOR: Prime Video; STREAMING: July 29; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 45 min.
Comments are closed.