Parents Furious, Kids Terrified After Theater Mixes Up 'Insidious Chapter 3' And 'Inside Out'

Insidious: Chapter 3 and Inside Out don't have a lot in common. One is a PG-13 horror film about a teenager terrorized by an evil demon; the other is a kid-friendly Pixar movie about feelings. But they do both start with the letters "insid," and that was enough to cause a mix-up that left children in one Ohio theater "terrified."

Parents are reportedly furious after a theater accidentally showed Insidious: Chapter 3 instead of Inside Out. Though the staff caught the mistake early in the screening, one angry mom says "the damage is already done." Read all about the Insidious Inside Out mix-up after the jump. 

The Journal-News reports the event occurred at the Danbarry Cinema in Middletown, Ohio last week. Local parent Jazmyn Moore tells the publication she took five kids to see Inside Out, only to discover after sitting through the previews that Insidious: Chapter 3 was playing instead.

According to her, images of children being tied up and murdered quickly appeared on screen, spooking the children in her charge. Moore says she and the other adults in the auditorium quickly gathered their families and left. The theater manager apologized to the guests and offered free passes and 3D upgrades to the unlucky moviegoers.

The incident seems to be the result of a simple mix-up. "Insidious" and "Inside" would be right next to each other in any alphabetically ordered system, and it's not hard to imagine a distracted projectionist simply pressing play on the wrong movie. Moore, however, isn't satisfied. "I got our money back but the damage is already done," she said. "My children are terrified and keep asking questions."

For what it's worth, another person who claims to have been at the screening dispute Moore's account. "Insidious never started," Mandy Adkins wrote on Facebook. "The managers caught on to what was happening, and turned the film off right after the opening credits cut off, before any of the actual film played."

Adkins points out, "There are no children murdered anywhere within the entire hour and a half of Insidious, so it is pretty clear that this was a gross exaggeration." Instead, she suggests, Moore was probably referring to the Sinister 2 trailer. Further, she reports the children in the theater were "all calm and fine," and it was actually the parents freaking out.

While some have suggested Moore and other parents overreacted, as a childless adult I don't blame the grown-ups for freaking out at all. I'd be pissed, too, if I paid for a Pixar masterpiece only to be shown a watered-down installment of a flagging horror franchise.