The Devil’s Mouth – Official Trailer Prime Video (2026)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPOSITIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fifty years after Jaws terrified audiences into never going back into the water, its uninspired imitators still arrive in drones, yearly, and while The Devil’s Mouth is unfortunately another for the submerged pile, there are some beneficial gains in sporadic instances, beginning with the dependable work of Kathryn Newton, who is undeniably far too good to be a part of this movie. Despite the script minimizing the opportunity for each actor to break apart from the pack dramatically, Newton etches out a stoic stage presence, cunning bravery, and evolving resiliency that allows her to get her hands dirty through some physically demanding sequences, expanding her into the ideal kind of final girl who is not afraid to face overwhelming adversity head-on. While far from Newton’s best dramatic or comedic work to date, her turn as Sara becomes memorable as a result of the way she grounds the character with ample humanity and a lived-in kind of psychology that not only allows her to stand out refreshingly from other characters who constantly come across as one-dimensional types, but also expresses so much about the intricacies of those friendship dynamics without the dialogue requiring transparency to telegraph it, and considering the film seemingly goes out of its way to constantly undermine her Herculean efforts, the finished product would be a whole lot worse without her name and image attached to it, appraising her irreplaceable impact to a film where her constant professionalism feels thankless. Aside from Wadlow’s leading lady, the presentation of the film is breathtakingly gorgeous, as a result of some on-site Thailand imagery exuding an exotic appeal to James Kniest’s cinematography, allowing effortless immersion into a distinguished setting that coherently outlines the isolation factor of these helpless characters. This is most realized during an introductory credits roll of montaged moments between these friends, which on its own contemporary relevancy feels refreshingly dated in the best kind of way, but beyond that paints a false sense of security within the live-fast lifestyle of the group that we already know is seconds away from being dangerously deconstructed, conjuring yet another unsettling example of the many things that can kill you in the far-from-home kind of foreign lands. Lastly, while the action sequences are admittedly a mixed bag in the inconsistent execution of the production, the moments that they do work effectively involve obscuring an artificial shark underwater, where like the aforementioned Jaws, the film maximizes urgency and intensity in the unsettling realities of what we don’t see but can only coherently interpret from the sharpness of the ensemble’s responses to penetrating teeth and uncontrollable velocity. For my money, if the film maintained this creative consistency, then it would’ve been better off for it, as it authentically replicated the aggressive intensity of these ocean adversaries, and in the claustrophobic confines of a cave not made for humans or creatures, the aches and pains start to mount for those environmentally disadvantaged, leaving the shark just one of the many unforeseen obstacles that the friends must eventually overcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NEGATIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite some periodic appeals to Wadlow’s execution, The Devil’s Mouth is far and away one of the worst strictly serious shark movies that I have ever experienced, featuring a litany of detracting components that make for a difficult long-term investment for a movie that barely clocks in at 100 minutes. Among them, the screenplay from Aja Gabel and Myung Joh Wesner is a first draft kind of monotonous mess, not only in crafting supporting characters who are defined by the minimal things we learn about them during the opening act, but also tumultuously clumsy dialogue that keeps us at a grave distance from the conversations between characters. On the former, the obnoxiousness of the abrasive personalities certainly undermine the empathetic value of surmising stakes from the physical conflicts with the clashing shark, where a complete absence of emotional underlining in the focused characters and periodic outsider extras inflate the body count without any kind of monumental loss between them, and the latter, while navigating a telegraphed map of transparent intentions that will inevitably find their way into the eventuality of some lazily constructed bombshell deliveries, lacks any semblance of sincerity or synergy to make these friendships flourish with connective chemistry, leaving it difficult to buy anything at face value, especially considering Wadlow’s direction is misfiring on practically every cylinder. Being that Jeff is the very same man who helmed Truth or Dare, the expectations were already against him, but even without preconceived judgments, there’s an undercooked blandness to the movie’s most exciting sequences that feel rushed without rationality, alongside choppy editing techniques and an overabundance of C.G-heavy imagery that makes it difficult to believe what we’re seeing. While it’s an unfortunate reality that artificiality garners a cheaper budgetary cost, in turn inspiring productions to evoke it, the finished products utilized here are nothing short of abysmal, especially once the shark eventually evades its obscured underwater captivity, leaving the lifeless dimensions vulnerable for at-home audience dissection, where every frame can be studied for how unintentionally hilarious that they come across in human and environmental interaction. It leaves the climax of the movie confounded by glaringly intrusive components that are out of the control of those involved on-screen with bringing it to life, and is the single grandest example of how straight-to-streaming cinema is about producing content as quickly and inconsequentially as possible, without the need for memorability towards a director who so direly needs it at this stage in his career. If a lazy script and flat direction aren’t enough to keep you as far away from this film as humanly possible, consider that the perfunctory pacing of the storytelling stalls as quickly as the opening act, leading to a long-winded introduction alongside these characters that takes an eternity to sift through before getting to the real meat and potatoes of audience expectations. Part of the problem with this section is certainly that so many of these scenes either drag on for an eternity, without urgency expressed on the editing, or that these repetitious scenes essentially convey much of the same intention in what they’re conveying, and considering it’s around the forty minute mark before the shark even materializes, let alone attacks, it ultimately enacts alienating tendencies to thrill-seeking audiences, leaving patience firmly tested in an expansive engagement that equally overstays its welcome just as much as it overcompensates its opening. It’s also one of those watered down kind of finished products held hostage by a remedial rating, where so much about the garnered gore of these ruthlessly gut-wrenching attacks feel tame, as a result of sanitized imagery lacking any semblance of the convincing red. While I wholeheartedly understand the accessible intention of marketing your product to the entire family, and not just those who grew up in the heyday of Shark movies being at their best, I think a major missed opportunity ultimately exuded itself in distinguishing this shark from his peers, especially once the surrealistic magnitude of his attacks elevate to the next level, but even from a depictive scale within the movie’s imagery, the underwater shots practically beg for vitriolic splashes, with little substantially to satisfy horror hounds with captivating carnage candy, leaving the film and its famished fish feeling sanitarily safe in the most uncompromising kind of ways. Last but not least, Newton’s aforementioned efforts are enough to surmise at least one compelling character among the fray, but because the entirety of her co-stars phone it in with flatly unconvincing performances that plunder their prominence, there’s nothing memorable about the candidness of their portrayals, especially Lana Condor, who is essentially every bitchy rich stereotype that you’ve ever experienced in real time. Though the desired designation of her objective personality leaves it easy to misunderstand the merit of the work she’s giving, the reality is that Condor’s depiction feels like an impression rather than an embodiment, where the egregiousness of her snooty deliveries comes across as distracting and lacking nuance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OVERALL
The Devil’s Mouth is a strictly serious shark movie that sinks to murky depths on account of cancerous characters, grating dialogue, and impact-free kills, leaving it paddling against the tidal wave of better and more convincing subgenre installments before it. While Kathryn Newton triumphs in a physically demanding turn that sheds another layer of her limitless talents, the film surrounding her stoic efforts is the kind of straight-to-streaming chum that dissolves as quickly as it hits the water, leaving audiences malnourished by weekly content that bites in the worst kind of ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Grade: 3.3 or F<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Directed By Jeff Wadlow Starring – Kathryn Newton, Lana Condor, Nico Hiraga The Plot – A group of college friends’ Thailand adventure turns deadly when they become trapped in submerged caves with a dangerous predator. As oxygen runs low, past conflicts emerge in their desperate fight for survival. Rated PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,4,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9802,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800\/revisions\/9802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}