‘The Devil’s Mouth’ Director Breaks Down His Bloody, One-Location Shark Movie, Those ‘Demanding’ Stunts and Why Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor Wanted to Switch Roles
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- Jeff Wadlow directed 'The Devil's Mouth' for Blumhouse, starring Kathryn Newton as Sara and Lana Condor as Max — two best friends trapped in a freshwater cave in Thailand with a bull shark; both actresses initially thought they should play the other's role
- The production relocated from the Dominican Republic (originally scripted for Mexico) to Thailand just 10 days before Wadlow was set to leave, after Bangkok soundstages became available
- Wadlow's team built 13 cave sets across two soundstages — including a 120-foot long, 70-foot wide set flooded with five feet of water and a 60-by-70 foot set with 15 feet of water — to simulate an endless cave system
- The cast spent two weeks training in treading water, breath holds, and kayak work; Newton performed her own 35-foot cliff jump into a shallow pool, and most stunt and underwater work was done by the actors themselves
- Wadlow cited the 2018 Thai soccer team cave rescue as inspiration, saying a remote Thai freshwater system made the characters' peril more plausible than a frequently visited Mexican cave would have
- The director is allergic to peanuts and spent six months in Thailand with a dedicated assistant whose sole job was keeping him fed and alive; less than a dozen Westerners worked on the production
- The screenplay was written by Aja Gabel and Myung Joh Wesner and landed on the Black List in 2019; Wadlow rewrote it after being attracted by the one-location concept, calling it 'an intersection between the shark movie genre and the claustrophobic horror movie'
Why it matters: A 10-day location swap that moved production from the Dominican Republic to Thailand reshaped the film's credibility — Wadlow leaned on the real-world Thai cave rescue to justify a more isolated, exotic setting. The 13-set flooded soundstage solution shows how lower-budget Blumhouse productions are using overseas cost advantages and practical effects to deliver genre spectacle that would have been impossible in U.S. studios.
