It’s debatable whether the creators of the killer shark movie “The Devil’s Mouth” really care for us to pay attention. A direct-to-streaming Prime Video release, this creature feature seems tailored for distracted viewers who glance up every few beats or so to take in another feeding frenzy — and even those aren’t that amusing.
Directed by Jeff Wadlow, the film follows a familiar horror template: A group of five reckless college friends take a trip along the coast of Thailand, where they go on a tour that goes awry. The group finds itself in a submerged cave system that turns out to be menaced by a hungry bull shark. Their local guide (Tayme Thapthimthong, from “The White Lotus”) quickly, and understandably, abandons the crew to bicker among themselves as the beast picks them off one by one in underwhelming, visually muddled attack scenes.
Moments of unintentional silliness had me wishing the film had committed to some camp, but as it stands, the script suggests that the writers had something more serious in mind than a shark-feast Grand Guignol. Tensions between the group’s leading ladies, besties Sara (Kathryn Newton) and Max (Lana Condor), aspire to the bruised psychological dynamics that fuel a subterranean survival thriller like “The Descent” (2005). But the many parallels with that film only emphasize the gap between them, making “The Devil’s Mouth” come off like a dingy-fishbowl version of the real thing.
Newton and Condor have enough personality to make their characters more than just floating appetizers — though their power struggle doesn’t sharpen the stakes so much as it merely pads the running time. Sara is the sympathetic one to Max’s tyrant, but I’m firmly team shark.
The Devil’s Mouth Rated PG-13 for drowning and violent aquatic predators. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Prime Video.
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