Sometimes my wife takes me on a “blind movie date.” I went to see East of Wall last weekend without knowing anything about the movie or even its title. She walked me into the theater with my eyes closed.
Wall is a town in South Dakota off of I-90. In 1978, I drove west on I-90 across the country and I remember seeing billboards for “Wall Drug” for hundreds of miles, like “Have You Dug Wall Drug” and the like. After such a billboard every 20 or 30 miles, literally for hundreds of miles, once you get to Wall, you HAVE TO stop and see what it’s all about.
I just googled it, and here is a street view picture today:
Even 50 years ago, it looked like this, and after all the hype of the anticipation, built over two days of driving, at the end it was just a drug store with a cafe, gift shop and other touristy stuff. But hey, it worked. I went to Wall, South Dakota, I stopped at Wall Drug, I don’t know what I bought, if anything, but I am writing about it almost 50 years later in a movie review. The campaign obviously worked.
East of Wall plays on a ranch in the South Dakota Badlands, well, east of Wall. Tabatha Zimiga is a young, tattooed woman with a bunch of teenagers, some of her own, and some wayward ones whom she has taken in to live with her, mostly girls. Her fiancé, John, tragically died by suicide a few years before, just after their youngest son was born. Tabatha had her first son when she was 16, followed by a daughter, Porshia, when she was 18. She herself was a child of a teenage mom. Her mom still lives with her on her broken down ranch. She struggles to make ends meet.
Tabatha is somewhat of a horse whisperer. She knows horses, and the runs a horse rescue ranch, training the horses, having her teenage girls exhibition-ride them at auctions, and selling them via TikTok. Her oldest daughter, Porshia, is her star rider. She has won many riding competitions, and all her siblings and step siblings look up to her as their star.
In comes a rich cowboy from Texas who wants to buy her ranch and spruce it up to make it successful. Will his ways work and will Tabatha fall for him?
As I watched East of Wall for the first 30 minutes, I didn’t know what to make of it. There were a lot of clips from smartphones ready for TikTok, of teenagers riding horses. There were teenagers hanging out doing not much of anything on the junk-strewn ranch. There were shots of rodeos and horse auctions. There were a bunch of women smoking and cussing and hanging around.
It turns out, East of Wall is played mostly by non-actors playing themselves. Tabatha Zimiga is playing herself in her own life on her own ranch. Porshia Zimiga is Tabatha’s real-life daughter. The teenagers hanging out at the ranch are the real teenagers the real Tabatha has taken in to raise along with her own.
East of Wall is a living testament to healing through grit. It shows how Tabatha and her ranch became a sanctuary amid grief, hopelessness and despair, both for young people and for horses. It portrays an unconventional family, a home built on mentorship and trust, freedom and life itself. The horses become symbols of strength and loyalty. East of Wall is a Western, but focused on women, on community and on emotion.
