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(Review) Jawing at the Mouth: THE DEVIL'S MOUTH Bites into Sharkes, Caves, and Toxic Bestiehood

By. Professor Horror 

I watched THE DEVIL’S MOUTH at the perfect venue for it: a spot right on the shore of Lake Michigan, with the lake's own dark expanse rippling behind the screen the whole time. You cannot convince me there weren't sharks out there too. Lake Michigan makes an excellent, uninvited co-star for a movie going experience like this one, and I'm not sure the film could have asked for a better backdrop. Thanks for the ambiance, big lake. It's the kind of viewing experience that puts you in exactly the right paranoid headspace before the movie has even started, which, it turns out, is useful preparation for what follows.

THE DEVIL’S MOUTH follows a group of college friends on one last blowout trip to Thailand before adult responsibilities catch up with them. They've got money, they've got entitlement, and the country becomes their personal playground: secluded beaches, a private yacht, and a steadfast refusal to think about anything past next week. Best friends forever, living in the moment, looking incredible on the socials, right up until a near tragic mistake starts pulling the group apart at the seams. Part of the reason for the trip is Sara (Kathryn Newton), who wants to recreate a journey her recently deceased father took when he was young. She doesn't know all the details of his adventures, but she does know he loved the Devil's Mouth caves (a real, remote cave system in Thailand's Krabi province) which is where the film actually shot much of its cave and coastal footage. Fitting tribute, if you ignore what's about to happen down there.

If a pack of good-looking friends drifting toward deep water with something lurking beneath them sounds familiar, it should. Our review of ANACONDA (2025) covers another reunion trip that goes gloriously, monstrously wrong, and it makes a fun watch-alongside for anyone tracking this particular strain of friend-group horror this year.

Once the group and their guide start spelunking into the underwater caves, the film gets genuinely tense. The tight frames of the camera mirror the tight fit of the tunnels, and the characters are in up to their necks in dark water, their head lanterns casting harsh, high contrast pools of light against everything they can't see. The opening stretch spends its time building out the friend group dynamics, and dropping in ominous underwater shots along the way to remind us that something is lurking below...unseen. The trouble is the build up to the actual danger doesn't surface until around the 40 minute mark, and I would have liked that toothy cameo to show up sooner. There's a lot of patience required to get through the setup, and while some of it pays off later, a movie with this title probably didn't need to make its audience wait quite that long to see teeth.

Newton kills it as usual in the lead, and her onscreen best friend Max (Lana Condor) brings the same fiery bitchiness she played so well in Pretty Lethal. That's not incidental. This is a movie as interested in toxic friendship as it is in toxic waters. Max is basically a land shark, an apex predator ruling and terrifying everyone around her, while her friends and boyfriend exist as the symbiotic fish who have to swim along and serve her or risk getting eaten themselves. It's a smart bit of thematic doubling that the film doesn't lean into quite hard enough, but it's there if you're looking for it, and it gives the human drama a little more teeth of its own.

Which brings us to the film's real hook: it combines three fears for the price of one, caves, deep water, and the most famous summer fear of all...sharks. THE DEVIL’S MOUTH really does ask you to sit with the question of whether you would rather die in the mouth of a shark or in a teeny tiny claustrophobic cave. There's no good answer, and the film wrings a few genuinely fun set pieces out of not giving you one. The tight spaces of the caves and the underwater sequences had me legitimately holding my breath, willing the characters toward dry, open land. It's also the kind of movie that makes its cast of entitled, annoying college students so insufferable that you'll leave (hopefully) reassessing a friendship or two of your own.

Less successful is the melodramatic dialogue about dead parent backstories and standing up for yourself, which keeps surfacing at the worst possible moments (like while everyone is trying not to drown inside a flooded cave). There's also a small army of barely named characters whose only real function in the script is to die, which is a shark movie tradition as old as chum. THE DEVIL’S MOUTH isn't going to crack anyone's list of the best shark movies, or even the best cave movies. It's a little too slow to bare its teeth, and a little too eager to cut away to backstory when it should be cutting away to bull shark. But as a fun, dumb, sun drenched summer watch that pairs sharks with claustrophobia and a mean girl with actual teeth, it gets the job done. Just don't expect it to have much bite. 

DEVIL'S MOUTH is streaming now on Amazon Prime. 

DEVIL’S MOUTH won't be the last horror movie this year to argue the people closest to you are the real threat. Our review of EVIL DEAD BURN makes the same case with a family reunion instead of a bachelorette trip, and comes out even bloodier for it.