Review: ‘Rock Springs’ brings America’s horrific sins to life
2026 / Dir. Vera Miao / 2026 Sundance Film Festival
Rating: 3/5
Watch if you like: A grab bag of modern horror tropes with a brutally timely reminder that America has always treated immigrants as disposable.
In director Vera Miao’s feature-length debut, a multitude of horror tropes are recycled and remixed in ways that are largely unsuccessful, yet stitched together into a mostly compelling piece that draws attention to the sins of America’s past that have yet to be reckoned with.
What starts like a typical post-Hereditary A24 family trauma movie—about the women picking up the pieces after the death of their patriarch in a woodland Wyoming cabin—quickly takes a turn. In a refreshing twist on the tired “Indian burial ground” trope, it’s revealed their cabin sits on top of the real-life 1885 Rock Springs massacre where a group of white European miners slaughtered a group of Chinese workers and burnt their homes to the ground.
Miao uses an unnecessary Weapons/Barbarian multi-perspective approach that doesn’t add much beyond awkwardly shifting from J-horror to body horror to full-on monster mayhem. The most successful of these changes is an extended flashback to the massacre featuring an excellent Benedict Wong and Jimmy O. Yang, which feels like it would have made for a better movie if it were extended to feature length. Despite the clunkiness, Rock Springs feels like a labor of love, with a cast giving it their all and a genuinely intriguing attempt to use horror to draw attention to one of America’s many bloodstains that are still poisoning us to this day.