EXCLUSIVE: Emily Rios (Snowfall, Breaking Bad), Louis Ferreira (S.W.A.T., Breaking Bad), and Bonnie Root (Cruel Hearts, The Movie, Cold Case) will star in the new independent horror-thriller feature film, Don’t Let Them Out.
Led by screenwriter Lila McLaughlin, who makes her directorial debut and penned the script, Don’t Let Them Out centers on a struggling woman who journeys to a property she has inherited in hopes of selling it to pay off her debts. But upon arriving to the property, the story takes a terrifying turn when the woman is lured into a desperate scavenger hunt down a perilous rabbit hole. The female-helmed film blends psychological twists with haunting horror elements in the vein of Hereditary and The Conjuring, adding in sinister themes of generational trauma woven into the storyline.
McLaughlin and Root are producing the project which is nearing completion at a desert film compound near Barstow, California. It will soon head into post-production with veteran editor Eric Strand (Donnie Darko, Tombraider, Mission Impossible 2, Lethal Weapon with plans for a festival release in 2025.
As an alum of The Second City, McLaughlin has sold and written for independent productions and studios including CBS Films and has previously been invited into studio writing roundtable teams for Universal Pictures and Fox Studios, helping to shape scripts in development for production. She was the 2nd Unit Director and Assistant Director on the award-winning independent feature film Hero Man. In addition, her based-on-a-true-story book, G.I. Hollywood, was published in 2018 by Heritage Builders Publishing and sold nationwide.
Root has starred in indie features like the Sundance Foundation film, Eden, opposite Dylan Walsh and Sean Flannery, indie comedy Coming Soon, opposite Ryan Reynolds, Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neil, and In The Weeds, opposite Molly Ringwald and Ellen Pompeo. She has since guest starred and recurred on over 50 notable network shows, including Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds, Justified, Cold Case, Without a Trace, Law & Order and CSI. More recently, Root starred in the leading role and produced on the dark comedy-horror indie The Movie, starred in the psychological thriller Cruel Hearts, and co-produced on the feature Death In Ojai, starring Philippe Caland, Madeleine Zima, Don Wallace and Gigi Levangie.
McLaughlin is repped by manager Brad Kaplan at Link Entertainment. Root is repped by Michael McConnell at Zero Gravity Management and Kevin Turner at Daniel Hoff Agency. Rios is repped by Roxanna Raanan and Robbie Kass at Kass Management, and Louis Ferreira is repped by Connekt Creative.