Writer-director Vera Miao\u2019s film, which stars Kelly Marie Tran and Benedict Wong, premiered in the Midnight program at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.<\/b>
\nA family grappling with a recent tragedy moves to a new town, where they don\u2019t know anybody and, even more crucially, have no idea about the town\u2019s calamitous past. But as writer-director Vera Miao\u2019s Rock Springs begins, they\u2019re very much in survival mode, a state that only intensifies as their situation gets more perilous.
\u201cLet\u2019s help each other make the best of this, OK?\u201d pleads Emily (Kelly Marie Tran) as they pull in. This not-so-tight-knit unit includes Emily\u2019s withdrawn young daughter, Gracie (Aria Kim), and elderly mother-in-law (Fiona Fu), who only speaks Chinese and doesn\u2019t think much of her late son\u2019s Vietnamese wife. The language barrier between them, needless to say, doesn\u2019t help draw them any closer.
All three women are grieving the son, father, and husband they\u2019ve just lost, but they\u2019re unable to connect emotionally to give each other any comfort. Though Emily tells Gracie, \u201cWe just have to keep going,\u201d and Grandma reminds her, \u201cWe must always pay respects to the ancestors,\u201d neither coping mechanism is working.
Emily, a cellist, imagines she sees and hears her husband while she\u2019s practicing; Gracie suffers nightmares set in a sort of purgatory that feels uncomfortably vivid. The oldest among this trio frets that their big move\u2014they had no choice, since Emily was uprooted by her job\u2014fell during \u201cGhost Month,\u201d 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\u2019t 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\u2019s the white lady at the garage sale who recommends local \u201cOriental\u201d restaurants to Emily, and the white girl whose friendly greeting to Gracie quickly gives way to a xenophobic nursery rhyme.
These neighbors aren\u2019t exactly hateful; they\u2019re just blatantly ignorant. But the film\u2019s 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\u2014a deadly, exceptionally ugly moment in history that feels unfortunately timely in 2026.
Benedict Wong plays one of the miners. He\u2019s older than the other men in his bunkhouse (including characters played by Interior Chinatown\u2018s Jimmy O. Yang and From\u2018s Ricky He), but even with more life experience, he\u2019s hesitant to give them advice about whether to sever ties with China and start thinking of America as \u201chome\u201d\u2014knowing the dream of prosperity isn\u2019t certain by any means. At any rate, all their dreams are ripped away once the massacre starts, in Rock Springs\u2019 most harrowing sequence of brutal violence.
The horrors continue once we see Grandma\u2019s cautionary tales of what happens when the dead aren\u2019t properly nurtured come true. While there are some stomach-turning makeup effects, Rock Springs never goes fully operatic with its nightmares. It\u2019s 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\u2019t the newest idea around\u2014at Sundance 2024, io9 reviewed The Moogai, an Australia-set tale exploring the generational trauma felt by a woman exploring her Aboriginal roots\u2014but the approach Rock Springs takes is especially thoughtful and nuanced. The performances help with that restraint.
Rock Springs is Star Wars alum Tran\u2019s second horror entry in a row after last year\u2019s Control Freak (another tale of menacing ghosts; find it on Hulu); she\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n