Mutant River – Blutiger Alptraum (2018)

Mutant River – Blutiger Alptraum: Directed by Charlie Steeds. With Kate Speak, Mark McKirdy, Makenna Guyler, Natalie Martins. 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.

“Acting and cinematography are passable, but once the creatures appear itu0026#39;s all downhill from there. The barge people are literally just wearing rubber masks and itu0026#39;s VERY noticeable. One of them even has eye holes that arenu0026#39;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 donu0026#39;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, theyu0026#39;re actually clearly just rubbing their mouth against them. Again, looks awful.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOther 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? Theyu0026#39;re hitting it in the back with frying pans, one of them using stabbing motions for some reason, and itu0026#39;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 donu0026#39;t know what they were thinking with scenes like that. Itu0026#39;s just terrible.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBig mistake to make these things talk too. Theyu0026#39;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). Itu0026#39;s supposed to be sinister, but itu0026#39;s just laughable.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThey 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.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOverall just a big waste of time. Clearly someone was looking to cash in with as little effort as possible here. Iu0026#39;ve seen worse, but The Barge People is pretty far down there near the bottom of the barrel. 2/10.”