‘Rock Springs’ Brings Horror From the Past Into Its Tale of Contemporary Grief

A family grappling with a recent tragedy moves to a new town, where they don’t know anybody and, even more crucially, have no idea about the town’s calamitous past. But as writer-director Vera Miao’s Rock Springs begins, they’re very much in survival mode, a state that only intensifies as their situation gets more perilous.

“Let’s help each other make the best of this, OK?†pleads Emily (Kelly Marie Tran) as they pull in. This not-so-tight-knit unit includes Emily’s withdrawn young daughter, Gracie (Aria Kim), and elderly mother-in-law (Fiona Fu), who only speaks Chinese and doesn’t think much of her late son’s Vietnamese wife. The language barrier between them, needless to say, doesn’t help draw them any closer.

All three women are grieving the son, father, and husband they’ve just lost, but they’re unable to connect emotionally to give each other any comfort. Though Emily tells Gracie, “We just have to keep going,†and Grandma reminds her, “We must always pay respects to the ancestors,†neither coping mechanism is working.

Emily, a cellist, imagines she sees and hears her husband while she’s practicing; Gracie suffers nightmares set in a sort of purgatory that feels uncomfortably vivid. The oldest among this trio frets that their big move—they had no choice, since Emily was uprooted by her job—fell during “Ghost Month,†when the boundaries between the living and the dead are especially porous. Hungry ghosts are a real concern.

That sounds like superstition to Emily, but she can’t deny her anxiety. Her distress is compounded by Rock Springs itself; while their new house is comfortable enough, the surrounding woods are full of moss, ferns, and extremely bad vibes.

That unease extends to the town, where casual racism filters into otherwise neutral social interactions. There’s the white lady at the garage sale who recommends local “Oriental†restaurants to Emily, and the white girl whose friendly greeting to Gracie quickly gives way to a xenophobic nursery rhyme.

These neighbors aren’t exactly hateful; they’re just blatantly ignorant. But the film’s second chapter offers an extended flashback that shows hate was once very much part of the landscape, explaining the deep psychic wounds that remain.

As the film explains, Rock Springs takes inspiration from the real-life Rock Springs, Wyoming, massacre. In 1885, white coal miners turned on the Chinese miners in their midst as anti-immigrant fury erupted—a deadly, exceptionally ugly moment in history that feels unfortunately timely in 2026.

Benedict Wong plays one of the miners. He’s older than the other men in his bunkhouse (including characters played by Interior Chinatown‘s Jimmy O. Yang and From‘s Ricky He), but even with more life experience, he’s hesitant to give them advice about whether to sever ties with China and start thinking of America as “homeâ€â€”knowing the dream of prosperity isn’t certain by any means. At any rate, all their dreams are ripped away once the massacre starts, in Rock Springs’ most harrowing sequence of brutal violence.

The horrors continue once we see Grandma’s cautionary tales of what happens when the dead aren’t properly nurtured come true. While there are some stomach-turning makeup effects, Rock Springs never goes fully operatic with its nightmares. It’s a very contained, intimate story, weaving the lingering effects of a mass murder with an exploration of Chinese beliefs about the afterlife and centering it on this one wounded family.

Using a real-life atrocity to inform a contemporary horror story isn’t the newest idea around—at Sundance 2024, io9 reviewed The Moogai, an Australia-set tale exploring the generational trauma felt by a woman exploring her Aboriginal roots—but the approach Rock Springs takes is especially thoughtful and nuanced. The performances help with that restraint.

Rock Springs is Star Wars alum Tran’s second horror entry in a row after last year’s Control Freak (another tale of menacing ghosts; find it on Hulu); she’s great here as a mom and widow trying to keep it together despite her obvious despair. And Avengers regular Wong is always a welcome presence, with Rock Springs giving him an especially poignant dramatic showcase.

Rock Springs screened at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It does not yet have a theatrical or streaming run date.

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