We stand at a moment when American history is being rewritten in real time—one that erases the struggles of immigrants, enslaved people, and Indigenous communities forced to sustain the project of colonization we call the United States of America. Against that backdrop, it feels like a rare and necessary act of resistance when a filmmaker uses genre to excavate what has been deliberately scrubbed from the record and restore it to public memory.
That’s precisely what Rock Springs, which just screened at the Sundance Film Festival, sets out to do. Written and directed by Vera Miao, the film cloaks historical reckoning in the familiar trappings of a haunted house story, using horror not as spectacle but as revelation. Pulling a page from Watchmen, Rock Springs shines a light on a tragic and often ignored chapter in American history—the persecution of one of the earliest Chinese communities in the United States—and the result is as unsettling as it is essential.
Keeping with the hallmarks of the subgenre, the film follows a Chinese American family after the death of their patriarch as they relocate to a secluded cabin in the rural backwoods of Rock Springs, Wyoming. Kelly Marie Tran stars as Emily, a mother drowning in grief; she is the adopted daughter of a white family, raising her precocious, non-verbal daughter alongside her husband’s traditional Chinese mother, who neither speaks English nor knows how to comfort her daughter-in-law. Their arrival coincides with the seventh month of the lunar year, when the gates of hell are believed to open and restless spirits—those forgotten by their families or marked by particularly tragic deaths—are said to roam the earth.
Unbeknownst to them, the cabin sits on the site of the Rock Springs Massacre, a brutal act of violence against Chinese miners that left an indelible mark on both the land and the community—one that still lingers today through the casual, ingrained racism of the surrounding town. Bringing this history to life are Benedict Wong and Jimmy O. Yang, actors often associated with comedy, who here deliver somber, deeply human performances as miners who came to America in search of opportunity, only to be caught in events that would permanently stain U.S. history.
Kelly Marie Tran, widely known for her role in a galaxy far, far away, delivers a powerhouse performance as a mother navigating grief, caretaking, and the unsettling reality of a supernatural cultural reckoning. The emotional core of the film lies in the relationship between Emily and her mother-in-law—an unlikely bond forged when Emily’s daughter goes missing and the two women are forced to confront both their shared loss and the spirits haunting the land. As the film builds toward its third act, echoes of Poltergeist emerge, with sociopolitical tensions boiling over into something both terrifying and cathartic.
Rock Springs delivers genuine scares alongside a deeply thought-provoking message that has never felt more urgent. By illuminating a forgotten chapter of American history—and honoring the immigrants whose labor helped build this country—the film exemplifies how genre can do double duty as both entertainment and historical reckoning. Powerful, frightening, and quietly devastating, Rock Springs makes the cost of America’s progress impossible to ignore.
