DUE WEST (2025)

Starring Adrianne Palicki, Henry Thomas, Ciara Bravo, Matt Lauria, Odette Annable, Joey Oglesby, Austin Nichols, Kevin Anderson, Eric Cepeda, Grover Coulson, David DeLao, Ashley Fink, Briana Garcia, Mona Lee Fultz, Evan Miller, Harper Miller, Kade Miller, Ty Mitchell, Jacy Nicholas, Jessica Perrin, Leslie Santa Cruz and Bill Wise.

Screenplay by Evan Miller and Hardy Janson.

Directed by Evan Miller.

Distributed by Cineverse. 81 minutes. Not Rated.

In June 2022, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping away a federal constitutional right that had been in place for nearly fifty years. The ruling didn’t just reshape legal doctrine – it reshaped daily life, creating a landscape where access to reproductive care in much of the South has become a maze of restrictions, delays, and dangers.

Due West doesn’t preach or moralize about abortion itself. Instead, it confronts the human cost of that ruling head‑on, following one woman whose experience reflects the reality now facing millions.

In fact, the film’s heroine – hauntingly played by Adrianne Palicki – is never given a name until it’s spoken as the film’s final word, which adds to the sensation of her being an every‑woman. She doesn’t acknowledge her pregnancy until more than halfway through the film. Even so, it’s clear long before that what she’s enduring.

She appears to be in her mid-to-late 30s and lives alone in a small town in Texas. She works as a bartender in a dive bar and drives a beat-up 30-year-old pickup truck. When we first meet her, she is texting back and forth with a stranger, trying to set up some kind of appointment. All we know for sure is that she has to get across the state by the next afternoon and bring $700.00 with her.

Of course, she doesn’t have the money, so she has to go to beg her estranged brother Cody (Matt Lauria), who would have to get the money from his well-off but stuck-up wife Mindy (Odette Annable).

They both try to pry into what’s going on. So does the local preacher, Pastor Mike (Henry Thomas). She even gets lightly grilled by her best friend and fellow bartender Becky (Ashley Fink).

She finally gets the money, gets the night off work, gets a burner phone and hits the road. Of course, nothing in her life is easy, so it is not a real surprise that her car dies less than halfway there.

She is given a ride to a local gas station by a young woman named Haley (Ciara Bravo) who happens by as she is walking along the dusty highway. Then when it turns out the station doesn’t have the part needed to fix the car, Haley agrees to give her a ride to her meeting spot. The women become friendly in the awkward way that strangers do, and it turns out that Haley is also dealing with some serious personal issues herself.

I won’t say what happens when she reaches her “appointment,” other than the fact that it has a horrific inevitability that is quietly devastating in its sad urgency. Throughout the film she is dismissed and mistreated and has the rug pulled out from her over and over again – and this is just the most horrific example of that. What should have been a solution becomes yet another betrayal.

However, through the kind acts of two other people – one a stranger and one someone she knew from her hometown who steps up for her – we are left with some genuine, hard-won hope. We never know for sure whether she has the procedure, but in the end, she is finally in a more settled position to make her choice.

More than in most reviews, I have struggled with the instinct to not give spoilers. So much happens and is revealed in Due West which is vitally important and kept me thinking for hours after the film ended. Facts like how the baby was conceived and why she can’t keep it, how the appointment went completely awry and who stepped up and how are all a huge part of why Due West works; however I don’t want to be the one who gives them away. They are best experienced for yourself.

Due West made an interesting structural choice – and I think the right one – in not making the film a debate over abortion or a political treatise on a post-Dobbs world. Instead it tells a story; a very human, sometimes tragic, but ultimately somewhat hopeful story. It is the specific tale of one woman, but in another way, it is a variation on the stories of many women.

Palicki has some heavy lifting in playing this complex and damaged character, and she becomes the battered heart of the film. Other performances like Thomas’ Pastor Mike and Mona Lee Fultz’s motel owner Nina have a quiet power that is quite striking. Lauria and Annable are suitably self-absorbed as family members who are not really there for her. And Bravo’s young traveling companion gives the film a bit of needed lightness before her story takes a darker turn as well.

Co-writer and director Evan Miller pulls the whole thing together with a spare, confident, moody indie sheen. It feels real, like an experience which we just happened upon.

The soundtrack is made up of moody country laments by the likes of Miranda Lambert and Tift Merritt, along with an evocative Southern score. There is also a note in the end credits which surprisingly reads: “Spanish guitar provided by Allison Janney (yes, that Allison Janney!)”

Looking back on Due West nearly twelve hours later, it’s striking how much of it still lingers – the silences, the small betrayals, the unexpected kindnesses, and the quiet resolve of its heroine. Many films shout their themes; this one simply lives them. It tells a small, specific story that reflects a much larger crisis, and it does so with honesty, restraint, and a surprising amount of hope. Whatever your personal views on the subject matter, Due West is a film that stays with you – and one that deserves to be seen.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 25, 2026.