The Barge People

There are an endless stream of blood and gore, screaming and weiling as killing commence and never ends. turdy story about uk citizen on canal boat vacation bumping into neanderthals and even better.

it has some clues of job well done, but its definately not a must see. the grumpy old man gives a weak recommend

Bloated fishy creatures make life miserable for a gang of mainly likeable friends on a boating holiday. The canal and surrounding area is very nicely shot by Charley Steeds, nicely showing off the beautiful UK countryside - and this makes a deceptively calm backdrop for when horrible things begin to happen.

Funnily enough, after a very effective first half, things dip a bit when the creatures turn up, and events seem to be heading in very familiar slasher territory (a scene prior to this involving the group entering a typically unfriendly country pub is surprisingly clichéd). This lull, however, doesn't last long.

The character of Ben is a cartoon character really, played as such by Matt Swayles. I get the impression he's brought in as light relief, which is fair enough, but seems a bit incongruous when everyone else is played as 'real'. Having said that, there are some nods into horror cliché which means Ben isn't entirely on his own.

I really enjoyed The Barge People. The budget is clearly a consideration - it would, therefore, be unfair to have a go at it because of a lack of multi-million dollar CGI effects or whatever. The creatures themselves look pretty convincing to me, although more could perhaps be made of their aquatic origins, which is never really explored.

All in all, great fun. 8 out of 10.

Kudos to the guy who made that, because as it turns out, The Barge People ain't that great. First thing, in the opening, they refer to the Kennet and Avon Canal. My heart sank. Oh no, this can't be British horror? Unfortunately, yes.

Overall, I will say I was entertained by this movie, and enjoyed it's unique setting, with the rented barges, but man oh man, was this movie derivative and predictable. Any twist or turn of events you can see coming. This movie, uh, borrows from at least a few other classics, most notably, to me, was the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Funny thing, if you read the trivia below, it says this filmmaker's previous movie is heavily inspired by TCM! Pretty sure I'll be skipping that one.

When was this movie supposed to have taken place? They put a yuppie in it! There were elements that were foreign to me (maybe just the result of a different culture), yet it had that stupid "retro 80's" (done by young people whose inability to ape 80's music is always evident) synthesizer score, the exact same one I've heard in countless other modern/retro horror movies over the past half-decade. I would deem this a modern trope all by itself. You want horror tropes? You've definitely got them here. My favorite: British J Mascis warns the 4 kids to turn around and go home! Every one of these types of movies has that scene. Here it is in 2018. I've seen meta horror poke fun of this trope. And I wonder what that bar maid is up to? Hmm, something's not right.

I mean, you could certainly do worse. It's got plenty of blood, a character (or -ers) you want to see die a miserable death, and rubber-masked inbred cannibalistic outcasted mutants... mutated by, well they give you a whole array of scenarios... all stolen! A solid 5, for being just dumb unoriginal fun.

This film is directed by the same fella who gave us the TCM rip off Escape from Cannibal Farm. The director is obsessed with red color n too much screaming n unnecessary badly shot carnage. The only thing good is the director's obsession with the settings of that of a country side.

Coming back to this film, it is a time waster as it is a cheesy copy of Hills have Eyes n Wrong Turn. It has cheesy n cliche dialogues - "no one escapes" "nothing personal" "my family has been feeding on the flesh for years" "u r not the first and u must certainly wont be the last". The over usage of red color n the constant flickering lights r annoying. The facial rubber masks r a big lol. It has offscreen kills as the effects r very shoddy. In fact the mutants from the low budget The Pack is more terrifying than these ones. Very generous with a 4 for the director's effort.

One reviewer has given this film 10/10. Clearly shows that he is associated with this film. Never mind, it's not a crime or sin to do that.

Acting and cinematography are passable, but once the creatures appear it's all downhill from there. The barge people are literally just wearing rubber masks and it's VERY noticeable. One of them even has eye holes that aren't quite the right size and you can see a bit of their face underneath. It looks awful. These are the cheap Halloween kind of rubber masks too where the mouths don't really function, which again, is very noticeable, especially when you can easily see that when the barge people are supposed to be eating people, they're actually clearly just rubbing their mouth against them. Again, looks awful.

Other effects like gore/death scenes are equally embarrassing. The creatures shoot geyers of water out instead of blood, which is already silly, but there was one part where two characters are hitting one of the creatures with frying pans and it inexplicably made water blood shoot out in spray bursts as if they were being stabbed? They're hitting it in the back with frying pans, one of them using stabbing motions for some reason, and it's wearing a thick rain coat, and somehow that fills them with holes and makes water shoot out? This is not a comedy movie either, so I really don't know what they were thinking with scenes like that. It's just terrible.

Big mistake to make these things talk too. They're supposed to be rabid mutant cannibals, and yet they can apparently speak English well enough to spout awful cliched comic book villain one-liners (through a very cheap sounding voice filter). It's supposed to be sinister, but it's just laughable.

They clearly had no idea what to actually do in terms of story once the creatures showed up either. Characters just ramble and pointlessly repeat themselves to fill up the run time.

Overall just a big waste of time. Clearly someone was looking to cash in with as little effort as possible here. I've seen worse, but The Barge People is pretty far down there near the bottom of the barrel. 2/10.