Kathryn Newton & The Devil’s Mouth Director on Changing the Shark Movie Formula | Interview
Amazon Studios’ The Devil’s Mouth unleashes a bull shark in a Thailand cave to bloody results. To learn about how the shark movie was made, ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with director Jeff Wadlow and star Kathryn Newton. It will begin streaming on Prime Video on July 29, 2026.
“Five friends explore The Devil’s Mouth cave system in Thailand for one last adventure before life in the real world begins. But they soon discover that something is hunting them under the water…fast, silent, and deadly. In the suffocating darkness, trust erodes, panic spreads and every wrong turn becomes a fight for survival,” says the official synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Kathryn, there are a ton of scenes in the water, and the cave feels very claustrophobic. How did the physical nature and challenge of this film compare to the other movies you’ve done?
Kathryn Newton: You’re right. It was a bigger challenge than anything I’d done. However, I had a cast of these really amazing young actors who never showed me any doubt, and I never showed them any doubt.
I think that’s the secret. It’s like being on a football team, or at least what I hear about being on a football team. The MVP, the team captain, and the coach never really crack, so I didn’t have to crack.
I never cracked. I never said, “This is going to be hard. We’re going to get hurt.” There was none of that. There was almost a delusion that we were going to be all right.
Honestly, we actors have to be a little delusional because we do crazy things sometimes. We just have to trust our director. A director like Jeff really knew what he wanted. There was no reason to get hurt or overextend because I knew the bare minimum of what was needed, and I could play in that space.
We had a lot of rules and safety protocols, but mainly, I had a cast of people I didn’t want to let down. I wanted them to give me something too. It was like being on a football team, if I do say so.
Jeff, I love shark movies. It’s basically its own genre at this point. We see so many releases each year. You had a really strong script as a starting point, but how do you make sure you’re doing something different and adding to the cinematic legacy of shark movies?
Jeff Wadlow: I’ve never seen a shark movie that took place in such a claustrophobic setting. Claustrophobic horror is its own subgenre. You look at a movie like Alien, and then obviously there’s the shark subgenre. A chance to have the two cross over seemed like too great of an opportunity to pass up, so I was very excited about that.
To get really technical, one of the things I wanted to do was make our shark attacks different from anything you’d seen before. Most shark movies take place on the open ocean. The shark grabs you, and maybe there’s a drag back and forth, like in the opening of Jaws. But by and large, once you go down, you’re done.
Because our movie takes place in this very tight cave system, I had this idea that the shark should be whipping people around and bashing them into rocks. Bull sharks actually attack people that way. They try to stun them by hitting them first with their snout.
I worked really closely with Alan D’Antoni, our stunt coordinator, to come up with this winch system where we could drag people around and make it look like the shark was whipping them all over and slamming them into rocks.
I said to him, “I want this one attack”—I’m not going to say which character because I don’t want to spoil it—“to be more brutal than the bear attack in The Revenant.” I think we pulled it off.
Newton: I’m grimacing because it is pretty brutal.
Kathryn, there are a lot of action scenes and bodies for the shark to sink its teeth into, but there are also a lot of emotional and character beats for you to sink your teeth into as an actress. What did you like most about having this story of personal growth for Sarah and having her really take charge and serve as the heart of the film, rather than it just being about surviving this terrible situation she’s in?
Newton: It’s a good question because it was all on the page. This could have been a play, and I think it would have been as palpable. Then you get us in the water, and we’re really swimming and really feeling it.
There’s a scene with me and Lana where we’re climbing up this rock, falling in the water, climbing back up, screaming at each other, fighting for our lives, and fighting with each other about our future.
You can’t act because I was afraid of really not being able to climb up, getting hurt, scratching myself, bruising my leg, and not being able to continue the day. Things like that you can’t really deny.
Saying the words and being this character was really the easy part. It was all kind of easy. I mean that in a humble way. It was an easy connection because I knew what was needed, and I didn’t have to do anything except show up prepared and stretch.
Stretching is always key. You have the important part down.
Jeff, the right music is also so important for getting terror across in a film. Can you speak to working with Bear McCreary on this film? You’ve worked with him a couple of times now across different genres.
Jeff Wadlow: This is the third time I’ve worked with Bear. Obviously, he’s very well known for The Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica. The guy is a real artist and storyteller.
One of the reasons I love working with him is that I don’t have to walk him through every scene and say, “Now we need the audience to feel this. Now we want the audience to be going down here. Now we want to be waiting.” He just knows.
I show him the scene, and he knows what we need and does it. In many ways, he’s like a composer version of Kathryn. As a storyteller, I want collaborators where I can say, “This is what I need. You see what I’m giving you right now. Can you feel what I’m thinking? I need that.”
You don’t want to have to talk too much. You just want people to get it, get on board, and understand what you want in the story you’re telling. Bear does that when we’re in post, and Kathryn does that when we’re on set.
Kathryn, obviously, you can’t film with a real shark. Was there a fin in the water or anything to react to physically? You were selling the hell out of these scenes, and it’s that reaction that makes them so scary.
Kathryn Newton: Thank you. We had one huge shark, and Jeff had it in his office. It was gigantic. Then we had one in the water, and we had a head and a propeller thing. We also had Alan D’Antoni, who was my shark a lot of the time to create chaos in the cave for me. That was one of my favorite days, when Alan was the shark.
Wadlow: He was the shark many days.
Newton: He was the shark, but there was one day when it was really just us locked in at the end of the movie. It was fantastic. He did a great job.
Wadlow: I didn’t realize how important that was going to be. Making a movie is often a long learning experience. I have this sick part of me that kind of wishes all the footage would get destroyed the day we finish shooting so that I can start over because I’ve finally learned how to make the movie.
Alan is a close collaborator of mine. He’s done my last five projects. There was one day during the shoot when he said, “Do you want me to get in the water and be the shark?” I said, “Yes, I think that is going to help. Get in the water and be the shark.” For many of our scenes, he was the shark.
Newton: I really got scared sometimes. It’s easy to get scared in a cave.
Jeff, I’d love to know what your favorite shark movie is that isn’t Jaws.
Jeff Wadlow: That’s so unfair because I love Jaws so much. I would probably say Deep Blue Sea. I saw it the night it opened because my college roommate was in the opening scene. I went and saw it in New York City the night it opened.
I’m going to ruin part of it. Sorry, everybody, but it’s been out for a long time. That moment when Samuel L. Jackson is giving that speech and the shark jumps out of the water and grabs him was crazy.
The audience went nuts. People were jumping out of their seats and yelling at the screen. It was so much fun. It was one of the most fun theatrical experiences I think I’ve ever had.
Kathryn Newton: To be so captivated and then just ripped out of it.
Mine’s The Shallows. Come on, come on.
Thanks to Kathryn Newton and Jeff Wadlow for taking the time to talk about The Devil’s Mouth.
Source: Comingsoon.net