The Barge People (2018)

Directed by: Charlie Always | 78 minutes | horror | Actors: Kate Davies-Speak, Mark McKirdy, Makenna Guyler, Natalie Martins, Matt Swales, Kane Surry, Emma Spurgin Hussey, Tim Cartwright, Carl Andersson, David Lenik, Barrington De La Roche, Sam Lane, Harrison Nash

Two sisters and their partners are preparing for a relaxing weekend trip on a barge. The setting is idyllic: a canal that runs through the picturesque British countryside. Float and forget all your worries for a while, while you sail with the boat along beautiful and rustic nature reserves. However, when the foursome hits a houseboat moored at the quay, the peace is quickly over. The residents do not intend to let this piece of nautical ignorance go unpunished. But the angry peasants are only the beginning of the problem, as an even greater danger lurks beneath the water’s surface…

‘The Barge People’ is an eclectic mix of different horror styles. Initially, the film seems to be heading in the direction of its British genre colleague ‘Eden Lake’: city folk who spend their holidays in rural areas and there they come into contact with violent rural people who do not like outsiders in an unpleasant way. From the moment the barge people, fishy-looking mutants who could have been born from the imagination of the late HP Lovecraft, make their appearance, the film becomes a mix between a monster movie and a print à la ‘Wrong Turn’,’ The Hills Have Eyes’ or ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. The film thus suffers from a slight identity crisis.

You don’t have to expect much from the dialogues in ‘The Barge People’, while the plot is not always balanced. Some introductory scenes could have been a little shorter, while elsewhere the story moves too fast. The pure horror part is well taken care of. Fortunately, the makers have been wise to take a classic approach and not opt ​​for cheap CGI monsters. The make-up effects aren’t outstanding, but just good enough to turn the fishy cannibals into terrifying creatures. The blood also flows abundantly, so that lovers of classic gore will certainly get their money’s worth.

This British work is certainly not a world film, but for lovers of a low-threshold amalgam between a classic monster film and a bloody horror fable, ‘The Barge People’ is quite enjoyable at times.