Kelly Marie Tran’s Chilling Horror Transformation

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Actor Kelly Marie Tran had never led a straight-up horror movie, and now she’s doing two. The first of which is Shal Ngo’s recently released Control Freak, which is streaming on Hulu. Tran plays a motivational speaker and self-help guru whose family history starts to manifest in some disturbing ways. After that is the upcoming horror thriller Rock Springs, by director Vera Miao. According to Deadline, “The plot centers on a grieving young girl who, along with her mother and grandmother, moves to Rock Springs, WY, after the death of her father, only to discover there is something monstrous hidden in the town’s history and the woods behind their new house.” Tran spoke with MovieWeb about her turn toward horror.

“They are very different,” said Tran of the two films. “You know, I don’t think I can say too much about [Rock Springs], but I will say the theme of sort of generational trauma is also there in a way that’s really exciting. And […] I got to work with Benedict Wong and Jimmy O. Yang, and they’re just like the best. So I’m just gonna say that. But yeah, I’m loving the horror genre, and I hope to do more as well.” Tran continued about how that theme is present in Control Freak:

“I think generational trauma is one of the big themes of this movie, and sort of how we do or do not deal with that. Like you said, I think the thing that’s really interesting that Shal and I got to explore together was this sort of idea that this woman was presenting herself a certain way, but then all of these things were really, really starting to go badly for her internally. And what does that mean? And how do those two identities that she’s sort of presenting — one being her personal identity, and then what’s actually presented to the public — how does that start to conflict as she starts to unravel? And it was such a crazy, exciting thing to explore together.”

Exposing the Festering Wound Behind the Facade in ‘Control Freak’

Director Shal Ngo also spoke with MovieWeb about Control Freak, and how he worked with Kelly Marie Tran to make it a more personal, intimate horror film. “It was really great for us to chat about it together,” explained Ngo. “We both have these stories from our family of these pretty harrowing incidents that occurred either just one generation ago or two generations ago that tends to never be talked about or expressed. You know, it’s just something that is like an inner wound that just very slowly festers, and it can come out in the most inopportune times. Like, I feel like I’ve witnessed it in my family, where people just do some very strange things and don’t quite know where it comes from.”

Ngo continued:

“The easiest way for me to sort of contextualize it in a very physical, metaphorical way, was the idea of like a facade on a film set, of like a beautiful apartment wall, or just a gorgeous looking space, the facade, and then the back of it is just completely rotten. The beams are about to fall apart. There are bugs in the wood, and it’s just getting worse and worse and festering, and eventually it’s all going to come crashing down. I think that’s sort of the visual of what the story is like. She’s being eaten away by something, and eventually it’s just going to come out.”

“But, yeah,” added Ngo, “talking with Kelly and figuring out where we could both approach it from a more personal place, I think was sort of the foundation of where it went.” You can see how it all turned out now; Control Freak is streaming on Hulu through the link below:

Watch Control Freak

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2025-03-16 01:40