Weekend Pick or Pass: The Devil's Mouth (2026) on Moviebox

Imagine it’s a warm Friday night, you’re plopped on the couch, and you’re craving a movie with some bite. Not a deeply engaging film, but a genre movie with some spook value to keep the popcorn popping. Jeff Wadlow’s The Devil’s Mouth with Kathryn Newton, Lana Condor, and Nico Hiraga attempts to be that film. It promises bad decisions made by college friends on a trip to Thailand that turns into a big game of predator in an underwater maze of caves. Just based on the summary, horror-thriller fans will find plenty to enjoy because it has a little bit of everything: the fear of being underwater, the friends trapped together syndrome, and lots of other cinematic cliches. For the first half, The Devil's Mouth draws you into the dark, watery embrace and offers claustrophobia and some pretty good thrills. But like oxygen dwindling in a cave, the film's momentum begins to fade. The first half has the most intensity, but the second half struggles to keep up. The Devil's Mouth starts out strong, but ultimately sinks into the murky depths of its own ambition.

Diving into the Deep End: What Works (and What Doesn't Quite)

The most outstanding feature of The Devil’s Mouth is its premise: a shark film set in a pitch-black cave system. To avoid the overuse of special effects, the writers creatively used the claustrophic setting of a dark cave system to build a shark film’s antagonist. When the filmmakers leaned into the cave system, they made oppression almost unbearable; the act of breathing felt like a luxury. The set is closed in, which adds to the effect of terror and oppression. The characters’ interactions demonstrate the relationship between each group member and creates a feeling of impending doom from their adventure. The nature of their primal fear resonates throughout the movie, since the perceived threat is a natural entity. The cast, specifically Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor, did an amazing job portraying the fear and desperation of every character. The film’s PG-13 rating means not much blood or gore, though it does create some actual jump scares and suspense along the way.

Still, as one person in the audience pointed out, the first half may be 'above average' for this type of film, but the second half 'hurt a lot.' This feeling can be seen in the wider audience scores, which average a 6.8, a combined sense of disappointment and satisfaction. The movie can't seem to move past the first level of the cat and mouse game, and while 'former conflicts' among friends attempts to add depth to the survival struggle, it is almost always underdeveloped and cliche.

Surface Level Thrills and Sinking Potential

Despite its possible potential, The Devil's Mouth is a movie that simply feels underwhelming. It does not score highly as either a cave movie or a shark movie, leaving it in a sense of genre purgatory. It doesn't fully embrace the visceral fear that comes with a creature feature or the psychological depth a survival thriller can provide. While the cast does a competent enough job, the characters remain fun enough, and aren't that engaging, making it hard for an audience to invest themselves in the characters when they inevitably get picked off one by one. At 106 minutes, the pacing begins to lag, and frankly, the story doesn't demand that long of a runtime. It starts with an atmosphere that feels tense and filled with oxygen depleting anxt, but quickly falls into generically survival flick like writing, with obvious and reused tropes. When averaged with a critic score of 29% and a Metacritic score of 46/100, the movie's reception would be best termed "mixed or average". The film has shown that they have good ideas, like the cave setting and the not-so malicious predator premise, but again, manages to miss the mark on repeatedly executing with the same level of sustainability. The setup shows merit in its ingenuity, but the screenplay should have spent time undertaking the psychological toll or the 'innovative' ways to raise the stakes, other than just running out of air or getting munched. This leaves The Devil's Mouth a tricky film to recommend.

You may not want to entirely pass on this movie but it’s probably not going to be the top choice for a Saturday night movie. It's an option for when you have already seen everything on Moviebox and need to watch something to kill some time. It contains some mild excitement but overall the movie might leave you feeling disappointed, similar to the feeling you get when you accidentally swallow some dirty cave water.