Why Kelly Marie Tran’s New Horror Movie Is Split Between 2 Timelines Explained By Rock Springs Director & Star

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Kelly Marie Tran stars in a new horror film with a relevant and important message, told through a story that jumps between two different time periods.

Directed by Vera Miao, who previously worked on Two Sentence Horror Stories, Rock Springs stars Laney Tran as Emily. Emily, a cellist, moves to a secluded house in the woods with her daughter and mother-in-law while still mourning her husband’s death. As she tries to build relationships with both of them – complicated by the fact that her mother-in-law doesn’t speak English – the family is increasingly haunted by a terrifying presence connected to the town’s history.

The story then moves back nearly 200 years to follow two Chinese miners who immigrated to Rock Springs, working and saving money so they could eventually return home to their families. But a sudden event changes everything, and its effects are still felt by Emily, her family, and the people around them today.

Miao’s film, Rock Springs, features a talented cast including Benedict Wong (known for Weapons), Jimmy O. Yang (Interior Chinatown), Aria Kim, Fiona Fu, and Ricky He. The movie premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and was also shown at SXSW on March 15th and 17th. Critics have generally liked the film, giving it a 70% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

During the SXSW festival, ScreenRant’s Ash Crossan spoke with Kelly Marie Tran and Vera Miao about their film, Rock Springs. When asked about the film’s non-linear storytelling, the director admitted it wasn’t planned that way from the start. Her main goal – and a crucial point when presenting the film to others – was to avoid focusing solely on the victims of the 1885 Rock Springs massacre.

I really wanted to create relatable characters and let the audience connect with them as individuals, not just as victims of what happened to them. To achieve this, I made them the central figures in their own stories. This approach allowed me to convey the idea that history isn’t something that’s simply over – it actively shapes the present. Even if the current storyline, led by Kelly, doesn’t explicitly acknowledge this, the weight of history is always present in the environment and can unexpectedly resurface at any time.

Miao explained that this background is central to the theme of displacement she explores in Rock Springs. As the child of immigrants, she’s multilingual but feels imperfect in all languages. This has led her to try and piece together her family history, a process complicated by her parents’ reluctance to share details. This personal challenge ultimately inspired the film’s multi-timeline structure, reflecting a sense of fractured identity and a broken personal history.

Many people in the diaspora, whose families are spread across different places and times, don’t have a clear sense of beginning, middle, and end to their stories. This film reflects that fragmented experience. The characters, particularly Emily and her family, are dealing with a significant loss that has already pulled them apart, making communication difficult. When they move to a new location, new forces threaten to further divide them. The film explores how understanding their history and bringing the pieces together can lead to healing – not just for individuals and the family, but potentially for a larger community. The past isn’t something we can simply leave behind; it directly impacts our present and future. It’s not a linear progression from past to present to future, but rather a collapsing of those timelines.

Tran & Miao Were Aligned For Years In Wanting To Explore Rock Springs’ Tragic History

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I’m thrilled to be discussing ‘Rock Springs’ with you. I’m really interested in learning about the inspiration behind the movie and what it’s about. To be honest, I wasn’t familiar with the real-life events it’s based on, and it left me deeply moved – I was crying by the end!

I started with a really big question: could I tell the story of being part of a diaspora – a community scattered away from its homeland – through the lens of horror? As a child of immigrants, it’s a deeply personal topic for me. I wanted to capture those feelings of loneliness, that ache for a true sense of home and belonging, and that sense of being…unmoored, pulled between different worlds and times. It’s a fragmentation that can really create grief. So, a ghost story felt like the natural fit – that subgenre is already so focused on grief and being haunted. Once I had that idea, I knew I wanted to set the story in the present day, but also weave in some forgotten history of early Chinese communities in America. That led me down a research rabbit hole, and I stumbled upon the Rock Springs Massacre. Honestly, I’d never even heard of it before, and once I started learning about it, everything just clicked. It felt like the perfect way to explore all of those themes I was interested in.

ScreenRant asked them how they started working together and what made their collaboration special.

Kelly Marie Tran and I first met eight years ago at Bricks and Scones. We didn’t meet for any specific reason, we just started chatting about our lives and interests. It then took another eight years for the Rock Springs project to finally come together. I’d read the script… I wonder how long ago that was?

Vera Miao says it took at least three years to secure funding and begin filming after the script was finished.

It’s amazing any movie gets made at all, and I knew right away that this was a project I wanted to be involved in. Vera is a really innovative and thoughtful person, and that really came through in the script. Seeing it all come together has been incredibly moving. She tackles important themes, but what sets her approach apart is how much empathy she brings to it. I don’t want to spoil anything, but after my usual initial self-critical viewing – I always do that with anything I’m in – I watched it again with everyone else and was deeply touched. She handled this historical event and its impact with such sensitivity, especially by focusing on the experiences of those who lived through it and how it continues to affect people today. I’m a huge fan of everything Vera brought to this film, and I know how much it means to her personally.

You know, when I read the script, what really grabbed me wasn’t just the scary stuff – although that was definitely there! It was the character’s personal journey. She was dealing with some really tough family issues and a big loss, and I found that incredibly compelling. I was really drawn to exploring all of that alongside the horror elements.

What really drew me to this project, and building on what Vera said, is the idea that the past and present are deeply connected. I believe healing isn’t always immediate, but can unfold over generations. Even if we don’t see progress in our own lives, looking at our family history might reveal a slow but steady movement towards healing. This story particularly excited me because it features a woman who initially has no idea about past events, then finds herself directly impacted by them. I hope the story shows her recognizing the pain others have experienced – pain she may have unknowingly carried herself. Ultimately, it’s about her confronting her own role in repeating that pain and finding a way to break the cycle. The idea that healing can happen in small ways over many years is what gives me hope, especially when things are difficult, and I think Vera captured that beautifully in this story.

Life is full of unexpected changes and disruptions. Even discovering something new, like a tragic event you weren’t previously aware of, can be jarring. It’s disruptive to learn about violence, and to realize there were things you weren’t taught. This often leads to seeking out more information. In my story, death itself is a major disruption – it shatters lives and alters the course of events. That’s why we meet the family already dealing with the loss of the husband, a loss that has broken them apart. The story’s structure reflects this disruption, exploring how unexpected events can derail our plans and how learning difficult truths can be unsettling. Ultimately, I want both the characters and the audience to understand that even when life is violently disrupted, it’s still possible to find some form of resolution. This theme plays out through the family’s grief and through acknowledging a painful history. I also made a deliberate choice to balance the historical and present-day storylines. The early Chinese communities in America were largely composed of men, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act. In contrast, the present-day storyline focuses entirely on women. This creates a mirroring effect between the two timelines, a kind of balance between the past and present, and allows their stories to resonate with each other despite the years separating them.

Be sure to dive into some of ScreenRant‘s other SXSW coverage with:

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2026-03-25 04:49