The Devil's Mouth (2026)

There’s not a huge amount to see here, but this is still a well put together, surprisingly well-acted, and perfectly serviceable sharksploitation flick.

Released to coincide with Shark Week, Jeff Wadlow’s sharksploitation flick does more or less exactly what you’d expect it to. We’ve had a whole bunch of shark flicks released this year; it's just that they’re often straight-to-DVD or streaming offerings. And while the appetite for these doesn’t seem to be wavering, it does feel like a while since one was essential. Many would argue that last year’s Dangerous Animals was an example of how to really pay service to Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), undeniably the film that kicked all of this off. But for me, Sean Byrne’s film couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a nasty A-list exploitation film or a B-movie homage, and it ended up somewhere in the middle; not nasty enough to be exploitation fodder, and nowhere near captivating enough to warrant some of the decent reviews it got.

The Devil’s Mouth doesn’t aim anywhere near as high as Dangerous Animals, veering much closer to 47 Meters Down (2017) or its surprisingly competent sequel, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019). It sidesteps the genetically modified shark approach brought by Deep Blue Sea (1999) and would make a perfectly serviceable double bill with the underrated Bait (2012). Released straight to streaming by Amazon, The Devil’s Mouth is a Gen Z offering in which we follow a group of American college friends on holiday before they finally enter the real working world. Led by Lana Condor’s unbelievably controlling and irritating Max, the group do exactly what she asks of them, in particular her submissive best friend Sara (Kathryn Newton), who in the opening scene of the film suffers some pretty nasty-looking jellyfish stings after being left in the open water due to a careless mistake.

The film is about this central toxic relationship between the pair, sort of, and although you couldn’t care less about it, it does at least add something to proceedings. The only depth we need here is the water within the cave system that the group is there to explore; that in this case holds a particularly nasty bull shark. Because the group is inexperienced and has never done it before, they’re told by their guide that they can only proceed through the beginner's route. That is, until Max intervenes in an extraordinarily annoying way, insisting they take the more dangerous ‘red’ route, at which point we all roll our eyes and prepare to fall asleep.

So we all know exactly what’s going to happen over the following ninety minutes or so. The only thing to guess is in which order this group is going to be mauled by the shark. But The Devil’s Mouth is surprisingly efficient; not in terms of surprises or anything approaching innovative filmmaking, but it’s shot well, and the caves prove a rather lovely distraction from the idiocy of some of the characters. At times you’re reminded of Neil Jordan’s The Descent (2005), a masterpiece in claustrophobic horror, and while Wadlow’s film doesn’t deserve to kiss the bootlaces of that film, it is at least a better film than The Cave, a wretched ‘horror’ flick released the same year as The Descent.

All in all, there’s not a huge amount to see here, but this is still a well put together, surprisingly well-acted, and perfectly serviceable sharksploitation flick. ★★½ 5.9/10