The Barge People

I wish this was a better movie. I was hoping it would be a nice UK horror along the lines of The Canal. But not so. Characters are one-dimensional and the little bit of story is lost in long dark stretched-out stab-fests. Its a shame something like this gets funded when it isn't much better than a student film. Really not worth the time. The "Killer!' 10 star review is bought and paid, for (their only review on IMDB)

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.

The title "The Barge People" sounded ridiculous, and even though it may be, it was a fun ride of old school horror. I think those of rated this film low have been spoiled with excessive CGI horror and scifi. None of that here, just some good old slasher gore. Two couples take a trip on a barge, unaware of the carnivorous creatures that lurk in their path. For a B horror flick, the acting is good and the battle for survival keeps the suspense going. Suspend belief, and enjoy some great horror tropes and moments.

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.

Turned it off about 45 minutes in. I Couldn't take this film seriously. Not a terrible concept, just too corny for me.