Prime Video’s New Shark Horror Movie Continues Disappointing 21-Year Rotten Tomatoes Trend

The Devil’s Mouth has surfaced on Rotten Tomatoes, but to underwhelming fanfare.

Produced and directed by Jeff Wadlow, the Prime Video film centers on a group of college friends who take a guided through the eponymous Thailand cave system ahead of their graduation, only to subsequently become trapped when a bull shark begins making them its prey. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come‘s Kathryn Newton and Pretty Lethal‘s Lana Condor lead the Devil’s Mouth cast alongside The Summer I Turned Pretty‘s Gavin Casalegno, Booksmart‘s Nico Haraga and Tommi Rose.

As the film makes its Prime Video premiere, The Devil’s Mouth has made its debut on Rotten Tomatoes. With 10 reviews calculated at the time of writing, the shark horror movie holds an underwhelming 30% approval rating on the review aggregate. This also continues a disappointing 21-year trend for Wadlow on the platform, as he has yet to land a Fresh rating from critics on any feature directorial project.

Wadlow has largely made a name for himself in the horror genre, going all the way back to his feature directorial debut with the Jared Padalecki-starring slasher Cry Wolf in 2005. He’s also frequently found himself partnering with Blumhouse Productions, beginning with the Lucy Hale-led supernatural horror thriller Truth or Dare, followed by the theatrical Fantasy Island horror reimagining, also starring Hale, and 2024’s Imaginary.

As previously noted, one of the main things that has stayed consistent across Wadlow’s various films is his inability to properly connect with critics, both in his horror and non-horror outings. A decade prior to The Devil’s Mouth, he joined the unfortunate list of directors to get a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the Kevin James-led action comedy The True Memoirs of an International Assassin, while the majority of his other films have hovered between the teens and 20-percentile range, as exemplified in the graph below:

In spite of its lackluster early score, it is worth noting that The Devil’s Mouth‘s Rotten Tomatoes debut is already higher than many of his previous genre outings, currently being his second-best horror rating behind the Marlon Wayans-fronted The Curse of Bridge Hollow. With only 10 reviews calculated at the time of writing, however, it’s difficult to say whether the inevitability of more reviews throughout the week will hurt or help the shark horror movie.

Even with its underwhelming reviews, though, The Devil’s Mouth is sure to be at least a modest viewership success for Prime Video. A summertime release has long been the perfect window for similar creature features after Steven Spielberg’s Jaws helped kick off the summer blockbuster genre 51 years ago, and with a roster of up-and-coming and beloved young stars, fans of the cast are sure to want to tune in at the very least.