A movie theater is experiencing a lot of screams and tears, after “Madagascar 3″ moviegoers were accidentally treated to a screening of “Paranormal Activity 4″ instead.

As confused parents and kids waited for the happy animation to roll onto the screen, they were instead faced with a pre-Halloween scare, as the terrifying opening scene of Paranormal Activity 4 flashed on the screen.

“[The scene was] enough to make grown men jump, so you can imagine the terror in these young faces,” explained mom Natasha Lewis who took her 8-year-old son to watch the PG animation.

“Everybody just scrambled for the exits,” she added. “All you could hear were children crying and screaming. Everyone was very upset. I’ve watched a few horror films in my time but the ‘Paranormal Activity’ films are the scariest since ‘The Exorcist’. It was only about two minutes worth of the film but it was enough to scar them for life. There were parents and kids in there, including some children who were younger than Dylan.”

While they can’t refund the 2 minutes of lost childhood, the movie theater is refunding all ticket costs. They also later screened the right movie, “Madagascar 3″ for the families who stayed around.

“We take matters such as this very seriously and are currently working with technicians to ensure this does not happen again,” a Cineworld spokesperson said.