For a made for TV movie, it is surprisingly good. Very good camera work, better-than-usual-for-TV acting. The theme is fine, the story is simple (best kind) and makes good use of a number of sub-threads. Some irritating characters, but then people really are like that. The script itself could have used a couple more coats of lacquer on it, but that's typical for Hollywood. The movie's ending falls apart a little (but only a little), but that's also typical for Hollywood, TV or otherwise.Let's say, "between made for TV" and the title itself, the experience was better than I was prepared for.

Somebody thought it was a good idea to have extra-terrestrial creatures invade the Wild West and make it into a movie. The whole idea sounds very juvenile and the end result resembles a movie fitting for children but with the horror violence and gore added to attract mature audiences. Take away the horror violence and gore and this movie could have easily been made into a cartoon for children.The end result is atrocious. There is not one single redeeming feature about this movie. Poor acting, terrible CGI and dodgy special effects done on the cheap, sloppy anachronistic attention to detail, and an even worse story. It might have been a low budget movie, but it definitely shows.The dialogue was very unrealistic given the time period. Surely the screenwriters, the producers and the director would have done a bit of research and learnt from previous Western movies or even gone on the internet. It doesn't have to rip off famous movies from Clint Eastwood, John Wayne or Charles Bronson but surely they could have paid more attention to detail. A total insult to all Westerns.The movie was so bad, I stopped watching the movie after 40 minutes as I could not waste a minute longer watching this rubbish. I didn't really care for how it ended as I felt it would be very predictable.1/10 (if I could give this 1/2 a star I would).

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

OK, now first off this is a movie set in a 1800's mining community in Colorado.About 20 mins into the film a 50's era Saturday night special is produced by the female bounty hunter character....umm OK....this wasn't the worst thing as about an hour into the film a few NICKEL PLATED COLT PYTHONS pop up!?!?! i mean really folks..whomever the weaponsmaster was on this one failed.Also the creatures(they look very good but the animators re ran too many of the same animations)are seemingly bulletproof accept for a small inch opening in their FACE which they widen to about 2 feet when they go to eat...not a hard target at all for someone with a 357 magnum...which brings me to our next talk point...45 mins or so into the film the main chars hold up in the sherrifs dept to escape the creatures where they then break into the sheriff's gun case and retrieve a few shotguns and winchester lever action rifles which were all well placed for the era....but the point is NONE OF THE PEOPLE LEAVE THE BUILDING WITH ANY RIFLES WHEN THEY RUN! the rest of the movie is a pistol extravaganza when there are higher caliber and more accurate weapons just a few feet away...The acting was OK for what the actors had to work with....the director seems to want us to believe there were no ugly women in the old west...there's a thin sub plot of uranium mining and radiation poisoning but thats not here or there.Also some odd voice overs were poorly mixed into the soundtrack...overall an odd film with a strange premise but watchable.