If you like the echo of screaming, Amazon Prime Video has a movie for you. Everyone else should probably avoid Jeff Wadlow’s miserable “The Devil’s Mouth,” a movie with a strong young ensemble of rising stars that Amazon MGM Studios is burying on their streaming service instead of giving it the theatrical release that its ensemble likely expected. The sad thing is that this shark movie isn’t even bad enough to recommend in a “you gotta see this garbage” manner like last year’s viral Prime original “War of the Worlds.” It’s just aggressively forgettable instead of memorably awful, which is almost worse.
The director of such atrocities as “Truth or Dare” and “Fantasy Island” packed up his bags and took a cast of beautiful young people to Thailand to make another movie that reminds us we’re much safer on our couches. It’s one of those films that was likely much more fun to make than it is to watch, as evidenced by the credit sequence of its gorgeous cast partying on a boat in what looks like one of the most beautiful places in the world. From the beginning, Aja Gabel & Myung Joh Wesner are playing favorites, focusing on two close friends in Sara (Kathryn Newton) and Max (Lana Condor). When Sara is accidentally left far enough from the boat that her screams can’t be heard when he’s attacked by jellyfish, it creates a rift between her and her BFF. What’s better to fix a broken friendship than a survival story?
Sara and Max are joined by three friends, although only one really matters in that it’s pretty easy to tell that Adrienne (Tommi Rose) and Greg (Gavin Casalegno) are the kind of non-characters who don’t make it home. “Booksmart” co-star Nico Hiraga is effective enough as the third lead and actually gets a moving moment in which he expresses regret at wasting a life he now worries is about to end. Finally, there’s a diver who exists just to be shark food and a guide named Wat (Tayme Thapthimthong) who does just about the only smart thing in the movie when he leaves his bickering tourists to fend for themselves, even if it’s too late.
What are they fighting? Once in the titular cave system, the gang discovers they’re not alone as a bull shark decides to feed on them one at a time. He also decides to stalk them like he’s Michael Myers. In a film filled with bad choices, the most egregious is how the shark looks and moves. First, it’s never once convincing that there’s a killing machine actually sharing the same space as these hapless idiots. It’s shoddy CGI through and through, which is to be expected, but it’s so cheaply and poorly done that it drains any potential thrills to watch people terrified of what is obviously not three-dimensional. Second, Wadlow allows his shark to act like a slasher. In one of the film’s funniest bits, Wat thinks he’s safe for a second, only to get attacked, as if the shark was just trying to fake him out like a serial killer playing with its victim.
Newton and Condor have been very good in other projects like “Freaky” and “Deady Class,” respectively. They’re able to sporadically elevate “The Devil’s Mouth” above what it would have been with lesser performers, but Wadlow’s clunky direction and the atrocious script are constantly pushing back against them. Condor especially gets saddled with an inconsistent character who becomes so abrasive early on in the film that one wishes her buddies would just leave her behind. Newton makes out a little better, but she too succumbs to shallow dialogue and unbelievable choices.
In the end, “The Devil’s Mouth” commits the one sin no successful shark movie can afford: boredom. There is too little reason to care about these tourists, leaving only a survival story that Wadlow and his team fail to make compelling. The film offers too little tension or ingenuity, and too few attempts to bring anything new to a genre that demands technical acumen this film doesn’t sniff. The truth is that the degree of difficulty on a film as simple as “shark in cave” is harder than it looks because there are no locations, ensembles, or twists to distract. And so, ultimately, there just isn’t enough meat on these bones. Plenty of screaming though.
