Skip to content

Sign in

Movie

The Devil’s Mouth

2026

Five college friends travel to Thailand for one last adventure together before returning to their everyday lives. Their trip takes them to a remote cave system known as the Devil’s Mouth, where they sign up for a guided swim through a network of submerged passages.

A recent storm has flooded the caves with seawater and marine life. Most of the animals trapped inside died when conditions changed, but something much larger survived.

A shark is now hunting inside the caves.

With their route through the system becoming increasingly dangerous, the group must navigate narrow underwater passages while dealing with limited oxygen, poor visibility, and a predator capable of appearing with little warning. Panic and disagreements within the group make finding a way out even more difficult.

Kathryn Newton, Lana Condor, Nico Hiraga, Gavin Casalegno, Tommi Rose, and Tayme Thapthimthong star in the film. Jeff Wadlow directs, with Aja Gabel and Myung Joh Wesner credited as writers.

The Devil’s Mouth combines shark horror with the confined setting of a cave survival thriller. Rather than placing its characters in open water, the film traps them underground, where escaping the shark also means finding a route through an unfamiliar and increasingly dangerous environment.

Why The Devil’s Mouth Is on Love of Gothic

The Devil’s Mouth falls within the creature horror and survival thriller side of the Love of Gothic collection. Its shark provides the immediate threat, while the submerged caves add darkness, isolation, confinement, and the constant danger of running out of air.

The film also uses several familiar horror elements, including a group trapped somewhere they cannot easily escape, deteriorating trust, violent death, and a predator stalking them through an environment where they are at a severe disadvantage.

Its combination of creature horror, claustrophobia, and survival makes it relevant to the broader range of dark cinema represented on Love of Gothic.

Watch

Trailer

Reviews

Sign in to write a review

Love Of Gothic Staff review

Trapped in a Shark-Themed Scare House

★★☆☆☆
Read review

The Devil's Mouth isn't the worst shark movie I've seen, although it's a long way from being one of the better ones.

There are some decent pieces here. The movie gives its characters enough development that I had some investment in what happened to them, and there are moments where the confined environment creates genuine tension. The basic premise stretches credibility, but I could have gone along with it if the shark itself had been more convincing.

Unfortunately, the shark is probably the weakest part of the movie.

The effects are underwhelming, especially for a creature that the entire story depends upon. More importantly, the shark rarely feels like an actual animal. The movie takes considerable liberties with its behaviour and attempts to provide an explanation for some of it, but that explanation only gets you so far.

Several sequences started to feel like the characters were trapped inside a shark-themed scare house. They move into a new area and suddenly, shark! It appears wherever the movie needs it for the next scare, sometimes with little sense of how it actually got there.

The repeated ramming doesn't help. This is another shark movie where the animal apparently loves smashing itself into people, walls, and anything else available. Even accepting that behaviour for the sake of the movie, some of the editing makes the shark's movements physically difficult to follow. It can charge past the characters in one shot and seemingly turn around, accelerate, and come charging back almost immediately. There isn't enough time or space for the movement we're supposed to believe happened between shots.

That becomes a problem because so much of the tension relies on the shark. Instead of wondering where it might be or when it might attack, I started expecting it to materialize wherever the filmmakers thought a shark would be scary.

I also really disliked the ending. The movie frames the final moments as a victory, but I couldn't share its enthusiasm. Yes, she dealt with one immediate threat but she's also left in a situation where survival is far from guaranteed. The triumphant tone feels strangely disconnected from what we're actually seeing.

There is enough character development and tension in The Devil's Mouth to keep it from sinking completely. A more convincing shark, more restrained use of it, and an ending that acknowledged the reality of the characters' predicament could have made this considerably better.

As it stands, it's a passable survival movie with a shark that keeps getting in its own way.