“Under Paris,” “Deep Water,” “Thrash,” “Chum” — the shark movies come so thick and fast these days, there’s scarcely any time between them to deem it safe to go back in the water. That said, if this recent run of films is to be believed, regular old beaches are fine these days. Seems the toothy predators are increasingly seeking less obvious locations to graze on wet human flesh: a mid-Pacific plane-crash site, the City of Lights, and now, in “The Devil’s Mouth,” a dark, dank, tight-squeeze cave in idyllic coastal Thailand. This claustrophobic danger zone brings a smidge of novelty to director Jeff Wadlow‘s aquatic thriller, but the formula is otherwise familiar: five hot young things on vacation, one bull shark very much in business mode, and a pecking order that most viewers can guess five minutes in.
It’s odd that the shark movie has lately joined the romantic comedy in the ranks of genres most favored for straight-to-streaming fodder, since its pleasures, from “Jaws” onwards, have traditionally been communal, cinematic ones: From the safety of your sofa, a great white jump scare just doesn’t land in quite the same way. A Prime Video release, “The Devil’s Mouth” sometimes feels ill-suited to the small screen, given the frequently squint-inducing murkiness of its setting; on the other hand, the very lax progression of Aja Gabel and Myung Joh Wesner’s Black List-featured script feels tailored to the requirements of second-screen viewing, with character tensions brewing slowly and repetitively between sporadic feeding frenzies.
