Fandoms can't save a movie and 'The Devil's Mouth' is proof of it The survival movie is available on the Prime Video platform
The Devil's Mouth, a Prime Video film, has demonstrated an old maxim: no gimmick will ever be strong enough if you don't have a good story behind it. In this case, what the operation of the streaming platform focused on was to bring together in the cast a group of young performers drawn from a series of products that have become mainstream. The most recognizable face, albeit with a minor role in the choral cast, is Gavin Casalegno from The Summer in Your Eyes, together with Lana Condor from the Netflix saga of Every Time I've Written I Love You. Also with them are Nico Hiraga and Tommi Rose, but Kathryn Newton is undoubtedly the driving name of the title, as well as the protagonist who will try to save her group of friends from a lethal bull shark.
The Devil's Mouth on Prime Video: review and critical issues
Found this year in the sequel Until Death Do Us Part 2 and soon in the massive superhero operation of Avengers: Doomsday, Newton continues her established career for which Let's hope The Devil's Mouth will not be a setback, even if she would have every reason for it. Meanwhile, the fragility of the narrative is unclassifiable, as is its direction and a mediocrity in visual effects that is embarrassing since that is what most of the (non) spectacularity of the film is based on. Jeff Wadlow's direction is cumbersome, false, scholastic and at the same time unnecessarily emphatic. The story does not allow acrobatics with the camera, yet they are attempted to be forced, difficult to digest and doubtful in taste.
Lack of tension and complex characters
In addition, there is the personality of the characters, some not at all in-depth, others even too much. They are therefore impatient and complex to manage, both alone and with the group they belong to. Whether or not these endangered young people are eaten by the enemy shark soon becomes an indifferent problem for those who are watching, forgetting the empathy outside the caves that the characters visit, resigned to the fact that they may be seriously wounded by the predator, or worse.
The illusion of fandom as a marketing move
The fact that the protagonists are familiar faces does not save them from the lack of compassion that can be felt towards them. And that adds a further awareness: it is not because you can appreciate the performers outside the film, especially when they belong to fandoms, that the same also applies within a work. Looking for fresh personalities from the current scene hoping that they will add value to the film is an understandable marketing move on the part of The Devil's Mouth, especially in terms of gossip. A way for a title to become visible, to exist at least thanks to the reflected light of its actors and actresses, and the only way not to disappear, something that this film would certainly have done (and will do) if it hadn't had the team led by Kathryn Newton to lend itself to its madness.
A survival movie that puts the viewer to the test
With The Devil's Mouth, the survival movie achieves a new meaning, namely the spectator's attempt to survive at the end of the vision, not turning off the platform on which the film is located before the end. An attempt to arrive at the epilogue of a (dis) adventure that should speak of support and friendship and fails to make the public try neither one nor the other while observing the company from afar. And far away we are left even with the immersion of the protagonists in an anonymous story to which the performers have succumbed, to whom we hope not to fall into oblivion into which the title of Prime Video is likely to sink instead.
