This month, the Rue Crew was invited to cover the premiere of writer/director Scott Windhauser’s YOU CAN’T LEAVE in Dallas, Texas. Shot in a nearby town by a largely Dallas-based cast and crew, the movie is now in theaters, and the event was a proud homecoming to those who worked on the shoot in early 2026.
YOU CAN’T LEAVE starts with a horror-film staple: a cabin in the woods. James (Spencer Boldman) tracks his missing sister Gabby’s (Cameron Inman) cell phone there, and a few friends tag along to help search for her. The cabin holds secrets, and the group quickly discovers that leaving will not be nearly as simple as getting there.
On the red carpet of the film’s debut screening, we were able to chat with the small cast to ask them one very important question: What scares you?
Thomas Bauer: What scares me? Things you can’t solve.
Cameron Inman: To be honest, the dark and men. OK, men in the dark. Being kidnapped. Yeah. Human trafficking. Which is why I do Krav Maga, so nobody will kidnap me.
Joe Nemmers: What scares me is what’s in your peripheral vision. So it’s seeing something and not knowing that it’s there, but having that feeling that it’s there, whether it’s real or not. Everybody’s had this moment in their life where they’re turning off the lights at night before they go to bed and they just like… Something feels off, and that’s a creepy feeling that stays with you. And I think this film’s really good about developing that feeling.
Taylor Murphy: Zombies. 28 DAYS LATER scarred me as a child. Terrifying. Even [Zach Cregger’s] RESIDENT EVIL I just saw recently, which was incredible.
Kristos Andrews: The element of the spirit, the spiritual element. Like, spirituality is such a broad spectrum where it’s the most beautiful thing in life, but it’s also, like, in the horror film, on the negative side of it, it can be really startling and really trippy. Because if you feel like you’re doing spiritual warfare, that’s really intense. And you have to, like, call on angels. You have to literally think in this way to challenge the light in the dark.
Paola Andino: OK, first instinct is cockroaches. All of them. Especially the bigger, the worse it is, but I’m definitely afraid of them.
Spencer Boldman: Not realizing or not executing what I think my potential is. Like, leaving this Earth unfinished. There’s a lot of stuff that I want to do. And also cockroaches.
