Reviews
The Devil's Mouth
Shark movies have seen a huge resurgence throughout the 2020s, with straight-to-streaming options becoming plentiful, so it almost felt inevitable that Prime Video would toss their hat into the ring at some point. They have done so in the form of The Devil’s Mouth, which packs a stronger cast and director than many of its recent competitors but delivers the same lacklustre quality that will have audiences questioning why they even bothered.
The Devil’s Mouth follows a group of college friends during their summer vacation to some of the beautiful islands that Thailand has to offer. It’s a dysfunctional group made up of two couples and a fifth wheel in Sara (Kathryn Newton), which is immediately established in the opening scene as she’s left fighting for her life in a pool full of jellyfish while her so-called friends sail off into the sunset without her.
For most functional adults, that traumatic near death experience would be enough to show that those aren’t really your friends and that you should leave immediately. However, this is a movie where common sense clearly is in short supply, so the very next day Sara tags along with those very same friends who left her for dead to head to a cave system that was recently flooded by a storm surge and that they are lucky is even open.
The movie’s many plot holes and frustrations should not shock those who are familiar with director Jeff Wadlow’s recent work, but even for those who are, the pathetic safety instructor Wat (Tayme Thapthimthong) really takes the biscuit. Despite warning several times that certain routes are off limits due to safety concerns, one kiss on the cheek from the flirty Max (Lana Condor) is enough for him to throw all of that out the window, risking his life, his livelihood and the lives of the people he’s there to protect. Inevitably it’s down this route where a hungry shark patrols, waiting for its next snack.
One of the biggest problems from the outset is just how unbearably irritating the friendship group are. For a shark movie like this to work, you want at least one person to root for, but that’s completely absent here. Every one of them, with their painfully cringeworthy Gen Z coded dialogue, is insufferable to the point you will be actively rooting for the shark to pick them off one by one. Even Sara as the lead, thanks to her baffling and idiotic decision making, feels like she deserves to be in this situation.
It doesn’t help that from the opening scenes it’s immediately obvious that the script from Aja Gabel and Myung Joh Wesner is as formulaic as it gets and every single twist and turn is equally foreseeable. Audiences will be able to take a very strong educated guess as to who is there as shark bait and who actually has a chance of survival, and there’s a very good chance they will be right.
Because of the weak writing, there’s absolutely no tension created at any point. For a movie like this to be successful it is absolutely crucial for audiences to be on the edge of their seats with sweaty palms, not knowing what is lurking around the corner. Instead, there’s just a barrage of obnoxious jump scares, with each one more telegraphed than the last, none of which will scare anyone who bothers to watch and only add another layer of disappointment.
Whilst obviously not helped by the poor script and the dreadful dialogue they are asked to deliver, the performances across the board are borderline embarrassing. That would be expected if this was a low budget production, but when sporting names like Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor in the leading roles you would expect them to elevate even the weakest material slightly. Instead, this is without a doubt a low point for the pair that they will not look back on fondly.
Even the elements that should be an easy slam dunk, like the shark itself, are a complete shambles. The CGI design is utterly jarring and, quite frankly, comical at times, which, given the likely budget Prime Video gives movies like this, definitely shouldn’t have been the case. The score also feels as though it’s as uninspired as it could possibly be, sounding like it was lifted straight from a copyright free library and hastily thrown together.
While a movie like this was never expected to be a masterpiece that reinvented the genre, audiences should have at least been treated to a competent shark movie that provided decent home entertainment. Instead, it feels like 100 minutes that could have, and should have, been spent on quite literally anything else that would have proved far more entertaining and worthwhile.