AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 may be one of the best places in the city to see a movie in synapse-searing IMAX, but you'd better hope the explosions are contained to the screen—the place is apparently a fire trap.

On Friday night, the UWS theater's 4,000 seats were nearly filled, stuffed with moviegoers eager to escape the frigid January chill. The 7:15 p.m. showing of August: Osage County was rounding out the home stretch around 9:15 p.m. when suddenly the screen went dark, as did the screens in the theater's 13 other auditoriums. A darkened screen can mean just about anything, but in this case, it was a response to an emergency alarm—not that anyone in the theater would have known that. Simeon Maleh was there, and has the following account:

There was no sign of any emergency and the majority of the audience remained seated, besides some individuals who ran to the bathroom, as the lights came on. A couple minutes after sitting, waiting for some announcement as to what happened, someone in the projection booth told the crowd that the NYFD was coming. That being the only announcement, the audience figured to get up and leave and walked out to the lobby. To our surprise, all of the theaters were evacuating. In the lobby, there was one lower level employee expressing to the crowds, only when asked, that everyone needed to leave and she didn’t know what was going on, but we all needed to leave.

There were no other employees around. Nobody was directing any of the guests. All employees from the concession stand had already disappeared. The only sign that any alarm had gone off was the strobes flickering, but there was no audible alarm.

Maleh and his friends headed for the emergency exit, while others went for the escalators. Upon reaching the bottom, though, they learned there would be no escape through the exit after all—the egress doors leading to West 68th Street were all blocked by dumpsters and garbage bags.

We headed back up the stairs to where we had entered, but the doors were only one directional and we needed to bang and kick the doors until someone heard us to let us back in. Eventually, we were let back into the theater lobby where we could exit down the escalators to the outside, still finding no working employee or hearing any announcements.

An FDNY spokesperson confirmed that the theater was indeed evacuated, but that the case was closed with no sign of a fire or other emergency. An alarm can be triggered for any number of reasons, the spokesperson said—heedless patrons pushing the emergency door, a frozen sprinkler head, and even, hauntingly, the grabby hands of rats.

Maleh said he encountered only two theater employees during the incident, neither of whom were management. Once outside, he alerted two firemen to the blocked doors. (It's unclear whether the theater has been fined, since the Department of Buildings website is not acknowledging the theater's address. Update: No violations have been issued, though there are dozens of elevator-related citations. Yay!)

Ryan Noonan, a spokesman for AMC, told the Huffington Post that the crew "immediately evacuated the building," and that movie passes "were issued to anyone who remained." He did not comment on the theater's lack of emergency warnings, nor the apparent lack of emergency exit plan.

Calls to AMC's media relations line have not been returned.

Update, 3 p.m.:

AMC spokesman Ryan Noonan responded with the following statement: "We are not aware of any issues with the fire exits," he said. "There was no indication from the theater, from any of our guest feedback or from the New York Fire Department, which was on the scene Friday, that there was an issue. Upon hearing from you, we immediately checked all exits and have found no issues."

He added the following statement:

Our top priority during an emergency is to evacuate the building quickly and safely, which is what occurred Friday night at AMC Lincoln Square. Within 15 minutes of the alarm sounding, all 2,900 guests were evacuated and the New York Fire Department was on the scene. Due to the importance of evacuating a large group of guests as quickly as possible, it was not feasible to communicate the reason for the alarm to guests still in the building, which has caused frustration among some moviegoers. However, in the feedback we’ve received, the primary concern is from guests asking about our pass policy. Guests can use their ticket stub from Friday night to receive a pass from any of our theatres in New York City. Based on all of the feedback we’ve received from guests, we are reviewing our evacuation plan with all of our theatres to ensure any future incident is handled appropriately and with as much communication and direction as possible.