High Plains Invaders

Let me start off by saying that it's better than most of the pot boiler Sci Fi channel movies. It makes a tiny bit of pseudo science fiction sense.

I'll start off with a pet peeve of mine, ridiculous gun handling. They mixed extremely modern guns with period guns with no rhyme or reason. Modern Smith and Wesson revolvers in stainless steel with modern target sights and ventilated ribs are used side by side with ones that almost could be period. It's sloppy, very sloppy.

It's no gem. It's pleasant, something to watch when you've had a bad day and are just in the mood to relax to something mindless. Unfortunately I found many of the characters ridiculously bad. The worst was the woman bounty hunter. She was just too 21st century politically correct, but she wasn't the only one.

Aliens invade a small town in westernville land. That's it for the plot. There is a lame attempt at a love interest sub plot but it never takes off and just seems like wasted lines.

This movie felt like I was watching grown men playing 'lets pretend' out in the back garden. It just had nothing to it that you could believe in. There was no single point throughout the entire film where there was an emotional connection with the audience. The acting was for the most part ridiculous not just hammy and poor but ridiculous. The female bounty hunter was just... I can't think of a superlative to meet so I'll just say miscast. Shouting out her corny lines in this schoolyard westernville town cheap TV accent.

The sound was pretty decent. The lighting I did not like. I think maybe a tint or some basic attempt at contrast was needed but it was all very samey and bland. The CGI was just passable not good but it was better than cardboard (although not a funny). All in all a film with very little charm or wit to carry off the lower budget. If you want to see a similar theme in a different setting (i.e. not westernville land town) look for Alien Raiders to see how a film of this kind can be made so much better on similar (if not smaller) budgets.

Interesting flick. Original plot line. Mediorce cgi. James Marsters (Spike, Buffy the vampire series) plays the lead character in a sci/western about invading aliens. Faced with certain death, Marsters, (Sam) chooses to fight the alien invasion with his own resourses.

I truly wish that the Canadian company that produced this had invested the money to make this film correctly. The actors have nothing to apologize for, they did the best with a small budget.

This film is worth a watch. Pay attention to the acting of the actress playing the bounty hunter Rose. Other than Marsters, she is one to watch.

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

The Good:

-Neat, Original Idea; Aliens v.s. Cowboys. How can you screw that up?

-Nice set design, costumes, casting. Looks like what I imagine a real Western town might have been like if I wasn't being overly critical.

-Marsters is fun to see playing the hero.

-The production values, action and running around and hammy story-telling was all very formula, but nonetheless executed with competence. It was as good as any average hour-long TV drama, and we've all sat through enough of that stuff without complaint.

The Bad:

-Dreary lighting. This might have been on purpose, but I found it a bit tiresome. Some clear sunlight would have gone a long way.

-The sci-fi thinking is about as sophisticated as a mediocre old Star Trek episode (minus the Kirk/Bones/Spock magic). The alien bugs eat, get this, *Uranium*. -Now, if this were the 1950's when, in the minds of the public, uranium was akin to magical pixie dust; the Gee-Whiz Science of the era, then it might not have seemed hopelessly silly. But today, it's simply not that impressive a trope to run a whole story around. Though, apparently the writer slept through high school science because in his world view, uranium, being the fuel of leading-edge human science *seventy* years ago, must clearly also be the core ingredient of any super-advanced alien society as well.

And for some reason, when it comes to this particular brand of silly, other levels of child-like thinking crop up. Because the aliens don't just eat uranium; oh no! It's also their primary weapon! But they don't use radioactive space rays. No sir! They shoot big Indian arrow head chunks of the stuff out of their tails. Uranium is probably the life blood of their entire alien empire as well, but I wouldn't know, because I had to give up two thirds of the way through the story. It just got too dumb for me and I started cringing.

-The dialogue was hammy; it sounded like what a child thinks the adult world sounds like. The actors did their best with what they had.

Conclusion: "High Plains Invaders" looks pretty good if you don't examine it too closely. If you're a (young) kid, this would probably be fun. But if you're a discerning adult, the whole exercise is tiresome and unrewarding. It's not so bad that you'll feel abused, but I say that after having hit the 'eject' button before finishing.

Only watch this if you're under the age of 10, stoned or have absolutely nothing else to do.