While Silent Movie Mondays is returning to the historic Balboa Theatre downtown, other movie theaters throughout San Diego County are anything but silent.
Something strange is going on inside local cinemas — and it’s sending people out the doors early for reasons ranging from absurd to alarming. There have been walkouts and evacuations sparked by rowdy Minecraft screenings, freezing auditorium temps, scorching sunlight, missing 3D glasses — and most recently, a mid-movie evacuation at AMC Mission Valley due to an apparent carbon monoxide leak.
That incident occurred on June 24 and was reported by patrons online. “Someone there was told a CO2 leak,” said Redditor Imecoli. “At least that’s what they told the people in the M3GAN 2.0 screening.” A TikTok video posted by Jennifer Chernay showed dozens of people lingering outside the theater after being evacuated, including an employee named Juul, who said, “I work here. It was a CO2 leak at the bar.”
Yelper Alison L. weighed in: “In the middle of the movie, the lights were turned on, and we were told to evacuate. I asked the worker who was in the theater to go out the emergency door. She told me ‘no’ — that we needed to go out the main door and didn’t even tell us what the emergency was.” Alison added that staff failed to communicate the nature of the emergency, even after everyone had evacuated. “I still had a headache when I went to bed last night. Next time, it might be worse — and people could die if they don’t handle things properly.”…