“An audacious attempt at combining historical drama with horror, Rock Springs has a lot of potential, even when it is slightly clumsy at times.”

The past is constantly being unsettled, whether literally through unearthing the land on which specific historical events took place, or psychologically through the ongoing discovery of the secrets that have been concealed from public view. One of the most harrowing chapters in history was the Rock Springs Massacre in 1885, in which hundreds of locals of rural Wyoming descended on a small homestead in which many Chinese immigrants lived. They had been brought over to assist in the construction of the railroads, raising families and pursuing what they hoped would be the easily attainable American Dream, only to have their lives cut short by the bigotry of the surrounding community. Vera Miao, in her directorial debut, sets out to explore this story – but rather than making a traditional drama that focuses entirely on these events, she goes in a different direction, using the massacre as the foundation on which she builds Rock Springs. Her simple but effective work of horror contextualises the massacre by exploring the aftermath, setting the film over a century later in the same location, but where the protagonists are a young widow who moves to the area (unaware of its history) with her daughter and mother-in-law, hoping to start a new life. Suddenly, strange events begin to occur, and it isn’t long before they learn the region’s dark history, plunging them into a battle with the spectres of the past. An audacious attempt at combining historical drama with horror, Rock Springs has a lot of potential, even when it is slightly clumsy at times.

A recent trend in contemporary horror filmmaking (particularly the more arthouse-driven entries in the genre) is to build stories around the subject of generational trauma. It seems that we encounter at least half a dozen works every year with protagonists who find themselves navigating challenging circumstances (whether supernatural or realistic), which ultimately all go back to the idea that everyone carries scars of the past, here presented in more literal ways. In this regard, Rock Springs is not particularly inventive. Where it does add more nuance is by including some cultural context – the story of Chinese immigrants in the United States has been oddly under-represented on screen, and while this is far from the definitive text on these people and their origins in the country, it does kickstart some fascinating conversations around their history and the vital role they played in the construction of modern America. Miao takes a bold approach: to centre Rock Springs around a traumatic incident, where the deceased who were slaughtered become one with their natural surroundings, destined to terrorise anyone who encroaches on the site of their cultural destruction until they can find some form of resolution. The film provokes a few simple but effective questions, such as asking whether these are vengeful spirits seeking destruction, or merely restless souls searching for closure, which can only be offered by those who exist on this land without any bad intentions. There are so many horror films that examine the unbearable weight of the past, and while it isn’t entirely thorough, Rock Springs does offer some intriguing insights into the subject, enough to pique the viewer’s curiosity and spur us to learn more about these horrifying events.

Rock Springs has a strong conceptual foundation, but it’s in the execution that we can see both the ambitious vision Miao had when conceiving this project and the areas in which it could have been improved to amplify the underlying message. The film is structured as a trio of vignettes. The first follows the protagonist (portrayed by Kelly Marie Tran) and her family as they move into a house in rural Wyoming, gradually experiencing strange occurrences until tragedy strikes. It then swiftly moves into an extended flashback of the past, taking place moments before the massacre in 1885, where we see the residents of this small homestead (most notably Benedict Wong, who delivers the best performance in the film) passing the time, unaware of the danger that makes its way towards them. The final act combines the two, being set in the present day, but where the added historical context helps us fill in the narrative gaps. The structure does allow the film to offer some intriguing insights, as well as to subvert form (since it poses questions at the start that we only find answers to much later), but it also means that the director has made a conscious decision to focus on the contemporary era, rather than exploring more of the actual event that inspired this film, which is objectively more interesting and deserves a work all on its own, and ultimately does slightly impact the emotional momentum of this story. However, this doesn’t disqualify it from being mostly effective, especially in how it focuses more on the atmosphere than it does the story, making the film an immersive experience. The tensions gradually build until they reach a disturbing but oddly poetic crescendo – and whether or not its climax is effective depends on individual interpretation, but it is clear that this is not a film without ambition, even if some of it can be slightly unwieldy.

Rock Springs may not tie together all of its loose ends, and it overlooks a few opportunities to develop some of the most fascinating elements of the story, such as spending more time exploring the history of the region – the massacre at its centre could qualify as a tremendous piece of filmmaking all on its own, and it is logical to wish for a film centred entirely around those events, rather than a horror film that merely uses them as context. However, despite occasionally employing the usual techniques we expect from a first-time director, Miao is clearly audacious enough to take a few notable leaps, especially in how she crafts a film that draws on our most carnal, harrowing fears, blending them with the supernatural to create an unsettling and deeply uncomfortable psychological horror in which the past and present collide, proving that they are always in dialogue. As a horror film, there are some genuinely unsettling moments (the cinematography by Heyjin Jun is quite striking, with every composition being both disconcerting and beautiful), which support the underlying conversation around how we make sense of the past, thinking that it is merely a stagnant record of what has already happened, and not a living entity, defined by the restless spirits seeking some kind of closure. It is very metaphorical, but that doesn’t prevent the director from taking some unusual leaps of logic, examining the history of this region and the spirits that she proposes still linger. She asks whether it is possible to let these souls rest, or simply allow the “hungry ghosts” to (as one of the characters says late in the film) “walk a treacherous path”, using this to hint at deeper meanings that may not be thoroughly examined, but are certainly enough to pique our curiosity and compel us to explore the period more intensively for ourselves.