“Fix your hearts or die.”
– A popular quote created by storyteller David Lynch, adjusted from a line Lynch delivers within Twin Peaks: The Return
It’s a rare thing when a piece of art fails its way into global success. There are plenty of stories of art that fail to connect with an audience or that do connect, just years later. Films like Last Action Hero (1993), deemed “ahead of its time” due to its meta narrative, while time will tell for Hollywood epic Babylon (2022). Then there’s Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). What began as a successful stage play that was then adapted into film on a terribly small budget in remarkably awful conditions was received with as deafening a reception as Brad Majors asking if anyone knows how to Madison. Yet, audiences eventually did show up, transforming the film’s specific idiosyncrasies into cinematic magic wherein the imperfections were embraced as a personal call-to-arms for self-love. In 2025, 20th Century Studios released a middling first-time 4K UHD edition of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and filmmaker Linus O’Brien unveiled documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, which took a holistic look at Rocky’s legacy. Now, via Time Warp, having its world premiere in the Documentary Competition section of Tribeca Film Festival 2026, filmmaker Allison Berg (The Dog) turns the camera on the people who keep the empowering message of Rocky alive at a time when self-expression is nearly a criminal offense.
Kenny Starling in TIME WARP. Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Set in 2022 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, Time Warp introduces audiences to Kenny Starling, who, among his many titles and ties to the community, is the founder of The Starling Company, which operates out of The Horizon Theater. A transplant from South Carolina, Kenny is preparing an upcoming shadow cast performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show cast with fellow transplants and locals of Rock Springs as both director and cast member in the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. He’s well aware that that the larger Rock Springs community may not be as interested in the production because the idea of seeing a film featuring (among other things) drag may not be enticing. Plus, seeing a film with actors simul-performing the action is … odd. Between talking head interviews with documentary principles and supporting members, captured footage, and film footage, Berg presents a microcosm event in which joy has the potential to override fear through the embracement of self-expression.
While the chances are good that you’ve come to this review with some sense of the madness that is Rocky Horror, in the parlance of the community, let’s assume you are, at worst, a virgin, or, at best, a masturbator, in which case, allow for some context. Created by actor/writer Richard O’Brien (Ever After; Shock Treatment) and directed by Jim Sharman (Jesus Christ Superstar; Shock Treatment), The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a sci-fi comedic horror musical that’s as transgressive in its original 1975 release as it is (oddly) now. Amid the Cold War antics and exploration of conservative ideals as not nearly as bedrock to individualism as one believes, there’s also quite a bit of (unseen) sex, (seen) cannibalism, and rousing songs. Though the villain at the heart of it all is Dr. Frank-N-Furter, played with intoxicating energy by Tim Curry (Clue; The Worst Witch), audiences find themselves as drawn to him as other in-film sycophants because his ideology is empowering: don’t dream it, be it. Don’t wait for permission, be the person you want to be. Since its 1975 release, Rocky Horror developed a cult following due to audiences repeatedly watching the film at midnight showings and then bringing more people to join them, using the unintentional awkward moments of the film to insert their own responses, bringing props to mimic the actions or moments on screen, and, eventually, featuring members of the audiences reenacting the film as it plays on-screen behind them. This last portion is the shadow cast (for they perform as the shadow of the original feature actors). For roughly 100 minutes, audiences can, in the words of Frank-N-Furter, give themselves over to absolute pleasure and play. Not cause harm, not injure or insult, but embrace the freedom that O’Brien encourages through his characters and the world they inhabit and become a twisted superhero by the end. As with any piece of art, audiences pick and choose which parts they want to acknowledge and which they shed. Though none of the subjects of Time Warp do explore the elements of the film which are worth releasing (language used; the coercive nature of Frank-N-Furter), each participant in Time Warp shares why the film remains pivotal to who they are as individuals longing for a sense of belonging – which is exactly what they got through each midnight screening of the now-cult classic title.
A scene from documentary TIME WARP. Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Over the course of the roughly two months Berg spends in Rock Springs, Berg utilizes Kenny’s production of Rocky to explore concepts of self-expression, gender identity, and art-as-salve, while also demonstrating the general inherent goodness of people. There are some who buy into the baseless sound bites, like drag is a gateway to pedophilia, but there are more who understand “live and let live,” which just so happens to be the state motto of Wyoming. The majority of the film does focus on Kenny’s Starling Company in the prep for the production, bouncing between interviews with the cast and crew, but Berg makes a point to talk to others in the community, as well, folks who work with Kenny at his day job, individuals around town, and others, to get a sense of what people think about something like Rocky, about LGBTQIA+ issues, and even about mental health issues as they relate to men (Wyoming is among the highest rated for suicide in the United States). Early in the documentary, then-Mayor Timothy Kaumo states that Rock Springs has eight months of winter and four months of everything else, providing the foundation for a notion that courses throughout Time Warp, that the people of Rock Springs suffer because of what they can’t share due to the harsh conditions they seek to thrive within. For those in the LGBTQIA+ community, as expressed anecdotally by Kenny and others in the Rocky cast, bullying is a regular occurrence with some frustrated and hurt by the conditions placed upon them by their respective families when some of them come out, breaking the expected social norms. Except social norms are, by definition, social constructs, which means that someone had to agree to them, thereby making it just as likely to change if folks understand what it means to be a part of this community. As we, the audience, go through Time Warp, hearing each story of connection to Rocky, of what performing means to them, and of how being part of something saved them, how could one reject these individuals? How could one not want to hug them? To protect them? For all they have is joy and, even the acts of the few to strip them of it, are not enough to diminish that.
Full transparency: like some of those featured in Time Warp, I have a connection to O’Brien’s work. I stumbled across it as a teen (in the early days of cable channel FX), became a card-carrying member of the fan club, and went on to try to show it to my friends (who were not quite into it). I have fond memories of doing The Time Warp outside my summer camp cabin alongside fellow fans and would organize (and participate in) midnight screenings of Rocky throughout undergrad at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The film means a lot to me for the friendships it cultivated (some I still have, some I will cherish for the time I did), even as I can recognize that aspects are very much of the time in which it was made. Because of this, I can notice when the performance itself comes into play in Time Warp and that some scenes are presented to us out of order, and yet, I couldn’t care less. If embracing Rocky is about self-expression, about being one’s true self for even 100 minutes once a year, then it matters more how one feels than the sense it all makes — the truest essence of being a Rocky fan. By this point within the documentary, Berg has done such a fantastic job of making the viewing audience feel a part of the show, an unseen silent Translyvanian, if you will, it doesn’t matter if a moment from “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch-Me” happens before “I Can Make You a Man Reprise.” The story Berg is trying to tell us about the cast’s experience captures the energy of the show — exhilarating, time discombobulating, and entirely freeing.
Kenny Starling in TIME WARP. Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Life is all about choices. We can choose where to live, what to do, how to dress, and how to represent ourselves. Someone decided that makeup, dresses, and dolls, for instance, are things girls and woman trade in, despite the fact that how they’re used or worn has nothing to do with genitalia or gender/sexual expression. If someone can decide what self-expression is ok, then, one surmises, that self-expression is not actually permitted if it must be approved by committee. Through Time Warp, Berg posits that there are just as many things we don’t choose as there are things we do. We don’t choose who we are in relation to who we’re attracted (or not), but we can certainly choose how to express affection for others (i.e., be a good human). We can choose to create a world filled with laughter, love, and art. We can choose to uplift marginalized voices who aren’t hurting anyone. We can choose to transform a dream into physical reality. In other words, if we can dream it, we can be it. Even as the conservative few seems determined to rip away any protections or place for those not cishet European, performances like the one Kenny organizes are even more rebellious than the counter-culture revelation O’Brien’s original The Rocky Horror Show production ever was. In this way, Berg’s Time Warp is as much a declaration of love-wrapped determination for a specific piece of art as it is an assertion that art is the way to fix our hearts.
Screened during Tribeca Film Festival 2026.
For more information, head either to the official Time Warp Tribeca Film Festival webpage or theatrical website.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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