20 Recent Horror Movies That Made ONE Huge Mistake
8. It's Too Damn Dark - The Devil's Mouth
Amazon's new killer shark movie The Devil's Mouth was blessed with impressively overqualified leads in Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor, yet you'd barely know it considering how dimly lit almost the entire film is.
Once the central friendship group enters the titular cave about 25 minutes into the movie, audiences are basically left struggling to see what the hell's happening for the remainder of the runtime, the characters scarcely visible amid a sea of murky, barely lit visual sludge.
While a cave system would of course not be well-lit in reality, remember when movies were more interested in visual intelligibility than the illusion of realism?
The audience will generally accept unrealistic lighting if it means they can actually see what's happening, and in this instance, it's tough not see it as a cheeky attempt to conceal the film's not-great creature effects.
If you're making the audience strain their eyes to even make sense of what's going on visually, you've already lost.