Sundance Review: Rock Springs Presents a Bold Ghost Story

      Rock Springs operates within a typical genre framework—a family relocates to a house in a town inhabited by peculiar individuals and soon finds themselves haunted by spirits—while delving into deeper themes surrounding the immigrant experience and offering a Buddhist perspective on the afterlife.

      Structured in chapters from various viewpoints, the film begins with Grace (Aria Kim), a young girl who hasn't spoken since her father's death months earlier. She dreams of him in her nightmares, which unfold in a stark vision of an underworld filled with dirt mounds and enveloping darkness. Her mother, Emily (Kelly Marie Tran), is concerned about her daughter's silence, while her Chinese mother-in-law frets over the new home's single bathroom.

      This initial chapter captures the confusion of being a young child in an unfamiliar place without friends. It culminates in a jump scare, but before viewers learn what happens next, the second chapter transports us back to Rock Springs in 1885. We observe Chinese miners gambling after work in a cabin. He Yew (Jimmy O. Yang) talks about cutting off his braid to Ah Tseng (Benedict Wong), an act of assimilation that Tseng advises against, reflecting on his own regret for having cut his hair. Tseng encourages the miners to look at the sky whenever they feel homesick, imagining they are back in China.

      Rock Springs effectively conveys the relationships among the miners and their connection to the new country. The scene's bittersweet atmosphere is shattered when white miners attack the village. The intensity of the violence escalates, as the action shifts from the burning village to the forest, with the fleeing survivors pursued by the white townsfolk throughout the night. Text at the film's conclusion reveals that the Rock Springs Massacre was a real historical event in which at least 28 Chinese miners lost their lives.

      The following segment, viewed from the mother’s perspective, reveals some limitations in the film's shifting viewpoints and non-linear format. The revelation that a scream from behind a closed door during the opening act belongs to the mother reacting to her husband's ghost feels like clever plotting for its own sake. After this opening ends with a suspenseful moment of the daughter being pulled into the woods by the creature, the film spends significant time on the 1885 flashback that illustrates the creature’s origin—effectively depicted through a time-lapse of dead bodies merging. While audiences may find their patience tested as the film jumps back again, the scenes featuring the creature lurking in the woods are visually striking, occasionally revealing an eye peering through foliage or a hand that withdraws when the mother turns to look.

      The conclusion of Rock Springs is both narratively and thematically coherent but feels somewhat abrupt, as the threat posed by the monster is resolved too easily. Nevertheless, with its imaginative creature design, compelling underworld visuals, and ambitious flashback sequences, the film skillfully explores the immigrant experience within a traditional horror narrative.

      Rock Springs made its debut at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.