Stories about far-fetched monsters and the supernatural are often created and fantasized about in the horror genre. Vera Miao, director of “Rock Springs,” rooted her film in human history, turning out far more terrifying than any fictional horror story. Featured in South by Southwest’s Festival Favorite section, the film was accompanied by a fireside chat with Miao and actor Kelly Marie Tran.
Miao drew inspiration from the events of Wyoming’s Rock Springs Massacre on Sept. 2, 1885, recreating the horrific events in the second part of the three-part film. Told in a nonlinear narrative, the other parts of the film are set in the present day, containing most of the “traditional” horror elements.
“I wanted to explore the experience of being part of diaspora through horror,” Miao said. “I knew it was going to be a ghost story and … a contemporary story which featured an Asian American family, but to do that, they also needed to be confronted with some untold history, particularly of the early Chinese communities in America, which was an interest of mine.”
The film’s approach to crafting horror through real-life events can be likened to the work of cultural anthropology, which film production designer Kathrin Eder specializes in.
“A film like this is deep research and deep emotional (connection),” Eder said. “There were so many themes that we built on together that we tried to embed, including the feelings that these men might experience, of longing for their family and what their patterns are … providing for each other in a community that is fractured in itself. All that gave us a lot of food for thought and … breaks away from what’s to be expected, or what people think, first off, of a coal mining community.”
Miao lauded “Sinners,” which won four Oscars on Sunday and is another horror film that draws its story from cultural context. Tran, star of “Rock Springs,” said she loves the horror genre’s ability to connect the past with the present and future.
“I love being able to address really deep themes in the context of a genre that is very entertaining and also brings out something primal in the people making the film, but also the people watching it,” Tran said. “You could be living in the present and still feel the effects of historical events that have happened in the past. Even if you are unaware of those events, it just seeps into our DNA and into our everyday experience of life.”
For audiences of “Rock Springs” and any horror film in general, Miao stresses the genre’s importance and its ability to mirror reality’s most unsettling monsters.
“When people ask me, ‘Why horror?’” Miao said, “I will often come back with this quote from (Antonio) Gramsci, ‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.’”
