NYC movie attendees scatter after spotting city rats prowling theater: ‘Really gross’

New York City moviegoers were sent running to the exits after what was supposed to be a leisurely experience devolved into a heart-racing horror.

An AMC movie theater in the heart of the Big Apple was overrun by rats, several movie goers said.

“We counted 9 rats running across our feet,” a patron at the AMC Orpheum wrote on social media. “Theater is filthy.”

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Visitors complained that there were city mice scurrying around the New York City movie theater. (Getty Images / Getty Images)

Another user said that during the showing of The Color Purple, mice were “running around.”

“@AMCTheatres has mice running around its movie theater during The Color Purple, theater 6. AMC Orpheaum 7 on 3rd Ave NYC,” X user Sweet Violet wrote. “Disgusting. The whole place is disgusting.”

“I’ve never liked this location. It’s as though you’ve given up. I saw two mice scurrying across the floor during the movie,” she continued. “People are walking out, literally!”

People are walking out, literally!

– Sweet Violet on X

A rat runs along the High Line Park on September 22, 2018 in New York City. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Connelly Roberge said that once he and his friend spotted the vermin they took off towards the exit.

“While the ads were playing we saw the rats going around the theater and promptly ran out,” Roberge told the New York Post. “Other people noticed it too, and were obviously freaked out.”

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“It was really gross,” another patron said.

New government statistics show that there have been 71% more reports of rat sightings in the city overall since this time in 2020.  (Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Eric Adams points at a chart as he announces the results of a pilot program aimed at curbing the rat population around Brooklyn Borough Hall on September 5, 2019 in New York. ( ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

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The recent movie theater incident is New York City’s recent debacle as it faces a continued spike in rat sightings, with a report released in 2022 noting the number of sightings has increased 70% compared to two years before. 

Democrat Mayor Eric Adams has described rats as “public enemy number one,” and City Council voted on a rat action plan in October 2022 to tackle the problem systematically.

In April, Adam’s appointed Kathleen Corradi as New York City’s first director of rodent mitigation, also referred to as a “rat czar.” 

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The job description called for someone who is “somewhat bloodthirsty” and committed to “wholesale slaughter” of the disease-ridden rodents.

Adams’ office and AMC’s corporate office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

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