TheLittleSongbird Okay, this is far from perfect, but it is watchable compared to other SyFy channel movies, most of which range from really quite bad to unwatchable. Granted the story is formulaic, the writing silly and weak, the characters clichéd and the ending abrupt. However, what makes High Plains Invaders better than most of SyFy's outputs is that in particular while it is not high art visually it doesn't look cheap either. The photography and editing is less slapdash than usual, the lighting has more atmosphere and the effects are much less crude and used fairly well. The music and sound effects for a SyFy movie are also above average, the film's direction while hardly genius or influential actually feels as though there is direction evident and the pacing is much more even than usual, going at a brisker pace without feeling too rushed apart from the ending. Also while the characters are clichéd, James Marsters, Sanny Van Hetteren and Cindy Sampson's above decent performances stopped me from feeling bored and disengaged by them. So all in all, could've done with a lot of improvements but actually compared to a lot of SyFy's stuff it is one of their more tolerable movies. 6/10 Bethany Cox

dwarven_tavern It's more difficult to review a movie that is abysmal than wonderful because there's just so much that's bad it's hard to decide how to begin. The dialog was infantile. Not only was the writing cliché and trite, it was obvious that the writer had never seen a western let alone ever heard anyone who actually spoke with an authentic western accent and dialect. Possibly the most horrid aspect of this terrible writing took the form of the character "Rose" whose ludicrous dialog mixed with laughable acting made for a character of pure comedy, but it wasn't supposed to be funny.The story line was sophomoric, moronic even. The plot was as thin as tissue and weaker than a ghost town's watered down whiskey. The timing of the expository statements were so in-your-face that one watching could only believe that the writer had the impression that everyone in the audience was incapable of understanding anything over second grade information. Saying it was insulting is an insult to the word insulting.The guns were a horrible anachronism. The style if six shooters used in the movie wasn't in place in the "Wild West". The only consolation is that the guns matched era of the dialog which is modern, though stupid.This movie is the clearest case of "let's make money as quickly as possible" I've ever seen. Utter crap. I wouldn't have finished watching it but my eyes were glued to the screen as if I were watching a horrible accident on TV and couldn't look away.

HeadMMoid Considering the utter garbage which has come from the SyFi Channel in the last few years, this movie was quite pleasantly surprising.The plot was reasonably fresh and mostly logical. The actors delivered acceptable performances. The outfits were good. The setting was quite acceptable and looked like the northwestern U.S. CGI, if not great, was at least better than typical SyFi fair. The ending was, of course, predictable, and left unanswered questions.A nice point was that the mandatory scientist (Jules) was not the typical all-knowledgeable font of information. Although he did make a few statements which included knowledge which did not yet exist in 1890, along with some that were just plain wrong; this role actually made fairly good sense within the situation.There were a number of questionable items. The female bounty hunter is not something which would be likely in 1890. Many, but not all, of the firearms where very clearly modern. (Does anyone who produces movies ever listen to someone with knowledge in this field?) Finally, the repartee between characters who are opposed to each other before the arrival of the "invaders" begins to strain credulity.Altogether and unexpectedly, this was a movie worth the watching.

DevastationBob-3 Caught it on-demand. Surely bound for the Sci...SyFy channel, but actually not too shabby. If you're gonna do low budget CGI, sure, you can do a snake that doesn't really look like a snake, but why not go for alien uranium suckers. I mean, how would you know what one would really look like anyway? The effects aren't too bad, and the cast of unknowns led by James Marsters (Spike from Buffy/Angel) does a good job. While the ending seemed kinda abrupt to me, I would have liked to see more of an epilogue, the script is engaging and doesn't drag. In the all-too-small genre of Cowboys vs. Aliens, High Plains Invaders is worth checking out.