EAST OF WALL - Mark Reviews Movies

East of Wall, Sony Pictures Classics

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 14, 2025

Moments of East of Wall feel almost too real, so it's not much of a surprise to discover that the majority of the cast members of writer/director Kate Beecroft are playing versions of themselves. They're the owners and occupants of a South Dakota ranch, which publishes photos and videos of the ranchers' horse-riding and other adventures on social media. That's how we're introduced to them in the film, but from there, Beecroft's story digs deeper and deeper into this real and makeshift family's lives.

To make it clear, the film is a work of fiction, which we know for certain because two professional actors, namely Jennifer Ehle and Scoot McNairy, appear as characters within it. Ehle plays the family's older matriarch, who spoils her actual and found grandchildren, likely because she has to come realize how poorly and, indeed, terribly she treated her daughter in her younger years.

That daughter is named Tabatha, played by Tabatha Zimiga in a rather stunning performance from a newcomer who, if the on-screen character is meant to be a direct or close reflection of the real person, has apparently spent most or all of her life doing ranch work. The first thing one notices about both Zimiga and Tabatha is the elaborate tattoo work wrapped around her neck. It suggests, along with her partially shaved hair, a rebel of sorts and definitely not the sort of rancher decades of movies and TV shows have taught us to expect.

The on-screen Tabatha, though, has a lot of that image in her, too, as she handles horses that don't seem interested in being tamed and sits in contemplative silence against the backdrop of her 3,000-acre ranch. There are layers to these characters, so it's little wonder Beecroft was so drawn to the real people who inspired them in the first place. Having anyone else but Zimiga play Tabatha probably would have lost much in translation.

The rest of the cast, apart from the two aforementioned actors, are family members, both biological and found, and fellow ranch hands, who have become friends or more. The central focus of the story is Tabatha's daughter, played and named after Zimiga's real-life daughter Porshia. The question of how much of Beecroft's screenplay is invented and how much of it directly comes from the ranchers' own story is one that shouldn't be speculated upon too much, especially since so much of the film deals with the characters' personal traumas and tragedies. When Porshia's narration talks about how lonely and uncertain this kind of life is, though, we have to believe that's true to some great extent.

Indeed, it's the entire emotional undercurrent of the simple, mostly unforced narrative. Porshia and the rest of the ranchers are dealing with the death, by suicide, of Tabatha's most recent husband John. They're not necessarily lost without him, because life goes on as it always had, but that's the problem as Porshia sees it.

John wasn't her father, but he was as close to one as she ever had in her life—a man who taught her ride horses so well that she wins rodeos and can perform enough tricks to convince buyers at an auction to bid well on the ranch's offerings. She wants to remember him. Tabatha, however, won't even speak his name anymore.

Porshia notices that, and so, too, do Tabatha's mother Tracey (Ehle), her current partner Clay (Clay Pateneaude), and the several kids, teens, and young adults who live on the ranch. Those younger residents are drawn to the ranch, because their own parents are struggling in some way, and to Tabatha, because she is so warm beneath that seemingly tough exterior.

There is something of a plot, to be sure. It sees McNairy's Roy, a visiting rancher from down in Texas, take an interest in Tabatha's way with horses and the ranch itself. He wants to buy the property to expand his business, and as soon as Tabatha points out that the land is more a home than a business, Roy promises it'll stay that way.

Thankfully, Beecroft's script doesn't do what many might assume it will at this point in the story. Roy's not a secret villain or even a dishonest man. He just sees the financial potential in this ranch, these horses, and the people who train and sell the equines. He enlists Porshia, the most talented rider in the area, to help him sell some horses at auction, and she quickly sees in Roy the same sadness she has about John whenever the subject of Roy's daughter is raised. He wonders if she's a witch. The girl just points out that a lot of people around here look and feel the same way they do, because there's a lot of untimely deaths in the region.

Most of the film simply observes its characters—how Tracey does indulge all of these kids as if she's making up for lost time, how Porshia fiercely rides and wonders if the nearby Badlands will one day collapse like everything else she knows, how the found family thrives, how Tabatha wrestles with the tragedy that has changed everything and everyone around her. There's a late scene in which the women sit in a circle and tell stories of abuse—committed against them or, in Tracey's case, now deeply regretted on her part. When it's Tabatha's turn, she finally tells the story of what happened to John, and a scene that already feels raw only becomes more devastating.

In such moments, we know we're not watching drama but instead witnessing reality to some extent, at least. East of Wall allows us to meet this dramatized family, and for whatever true-to-life experiences are conveyed here, it makes us hope for the best for the real one.

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