Extra layers of security, intense on-screen action and a frightening incident inside a New York theater combined to create an unsettling experience for some moviegoers who went to see “Joker” on its opening weekend.

 

A young man who was loudly cheering and applauding on-screen murders sent some people heading toward exits in a crowded theater in Manhattan’s Times Square on Friday night. Other patrons yelled at the man, who spit on them as they left early.

 

Social media users posted photos of police, security sweeps and safety notices at theaters in California and Florida. And in Tennessee, a drive-in theater banned moviegoers for wearing costumes to a screening of the R-rated “Joker,” which scored an October box-office record with $13.3 million in earnings.

 

One moviegoer said “The man started clapping and cheering again really loudly during a climatic gunfight,” he, said and got “belligerent” when people told him to quit.

 

“Finally security came and got him.” Another moviegoer said the loud man was sitting beside him at the start of the movie and poured what appeared to be a full bottle of alcohol into a drink. The man’s behavior “combined with the carnage happening onscreen got people nervous,”

 

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