The Barge People (2018)

Set on the canals amid the glorious British countryside, two sisters and their boyfriends head off for a relaxing weekend away on a barge, unaware of the flesh-eating fish mutants lurking in the water, ready and waiting to feed.

Director:

Charlie Steeds

Writer:

Christopher Lombard

Stars:

Kate Davies-Speak, Mark McKirdy, Makenna Guyler

Cast

Credited cast:
Kate Davies-Speak	...	Kat
Mark McKirdy	...	Mark
Makenna Guyler	...	Jade
Natalie Martins	...	Sophie
Matt Swales	...	Ben
Kane Surry	...	Ricky
Emma Spurgin Hussey	...	Rosemary
Tim Cartwright	...	Albert
Carl Andersson	...	Blade
David Lenik	...	Simon
Barrington De La Roche	...	Elderly Man
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Sam Lane	...	Razor
Harrison Nash	...	Max

Storyline

Four fellas take a barge n explore the canals in the rural side. Unknown to them that tons of toxic waste and hazardous chemicals have been dumped in the water by multinational companies which has caused genetic mutations among some people who have resorted to cannibalism.

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Plot Keywords:

fish | lovecraftian | 

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Taglines:

No one escapes

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Genres:

Horror

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Did You Know?

Trivia

The movie's real title is Mutant River.

User Reviews

Yikes. Awful waste of time.

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.

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

24 November 2019 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Barge People

Company Credits

Production Co:

Dark Temple Motion Pictures, Raven Banner Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

78 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39:1