Women of the West Rule East of Wall

1 ½ stars

According to the press notes for East of Wall, writer/director Kate Beecroft spent three years living with the characters of her movie, Tabatha Zimiga and her extended family, before sitting down to write a dramatic script based on their lives. She hired a couple of professional actors to play key roles, then “taught” Tabitha and her family how to act. 

It would have been better as a straight documentary, because it doesn’t work as a drama. And it needs a better title.

Set in the Badlands of South Dakota, East of Wall inserts us into the Zimiga household at a critical juncture: their ranch is failing, the bank is foreclosing, and the ‘man’ of the house has recently died. The female-dominated household, led by Tabatha, is trying its best to sell its horses and make the money it needs to keep its 3000 acres of Badlands. But its strategy of raising interest among horse buyers through TikTok videos isn’t paying off—the family squabbles, especially between Tabatha and her daughter Porshia, only add to the pressure. 

Just when things seem bleakest, a wheeler-dealer cowboy named Roy Waters (professional actor Scoot McNairy) enters their lives with an offer to buy their land and solve their problems. You don’t have to have a Stetson and fancy boots to know Waters is bad news, but the Zimiga clan is so worn down they are sorely tempted to take the money and run. But the pull of the land is strong.

Director Beecroft and cinematographer Austin Shelton do a good job of balancing the visuals to build the atmosphere of the film. The interior scenes with the family crowded inside their rundown trailer are claustrophobic enough to make a viewer’s skin crawl, while the wide open spaces of South Dakota’s Big Sky country will make agoraphobics implode. Their strong sense of style, unfortunately, is interrupted too often by too many TikTok inserts. It’s interesting that these ladies of the ‘new west’ use social media in that fashion, but it quickly becomes tedious in the rest of the story.

Although East of the Wall never reaches its potential dramatically, it does showcase a powerful performance that resonates long after the sun has set in the Badlands. And it’s not from one of the professional actors but from the head of the family, Tabatha. Not only is she a dominating presence that commands the screen, but she also shows she has the talent to back it up, particularly in the big moment when the secret of her husband’s death is revealed. It’s a raw and unnerving scene thanks to her and the other women that she confides in, and it’s easy to imagine Tabatha someday leaving her beloved Badlands for a career in movies. It’s equally easy to imagine she will be happy staying just where she is.